I have been on an emotional high for days now. The tumblers on my climbing camp, once jammed and rusted and bending my mental key, are now all sliding into place one after the other. Not only is it fully staffed with all needed equipment and not only are the prizes promised, but other, smaller things are coming in, too.
We had debated cost items like tee-shirts and certificates of completion, but without a fundraiser and not a lot of obvious donor backing in Zhytomyr I was skeptical that we could get them.
Enter backscratching.
Seeing a long stretch of nothing to do but teaching after the craziness of summer (October-December), I figured I had at least one more project in me before I left and should start exploring my options now. I asked around and was put in contact with the Center for Youth Initiatives, an organization that mostly works on information campaigns on both youth rights and get-out-the-vote. Turns out they were extremely well-funded, but they were happy to meet me and we batted around ideas about what to do if I got a Partnership Grant. They had wanted to do an information campaign against domestic violence and I also though that was a good idea. We decided to think about things some more and come back a week later to make a decision.
The next week (last Friday) I came to them with something better than a Partnership Grant: a Democracy Grant. The Partnership Grant would probably bring in only about $2,000, but a Democracy Grant (an information campaign about women's rights perfectly fits the grant) could bring in around $15,000. They also brought Ivan, who runs an advertising company here in Zhytomyr. They had told him about me and he came, interested in doing a project with me, too. He wants to create a series of short programs (5-10 minutes) done by youth that would run in place of a commercial set on local television. These programs would each focus on a different informational aspect for youth: drugs, alcohol abuse, youth rights, domestic violence, STDs, etc. They had most of what they needed: camera and editing equipment, a studio and an agreement with the television channel to run the programs, but they needed money to build set decorations and to purchase a video montage program so that they could put in professional graphics.
[A note on language: all these meetings have been entirely in Russian. Both Ivan and Andre (who runs the Center for Youth Initiatives) are really good at keeping their language clear and non-idiomatic and I usually come out of a meeting feeling like I am a language god. This usually happens right before I run into someone who starts speaking and then I don't have a damn idea what they are saying.]
So I agreed to do the Democracy grant for the Center for Youth Initiatives and the Partnership Grant for the Youth Program.
Then I asked, not really expecting anything, if they knew of a place to cheaply print tee-shirts and any company that might be willing to sponsor them in exchange for their logos on the shirts. Ivan said he knew where to get the tee-shirts done and Andre said that they had gotten a grant to give out seed money for small business initiatives. Someone had to attend a business education course and then apply for the grant, which could be up to $100. I sent Marina to the course (I figured she needed the contacts and the info and she was happy to learn about it because she's really into managing the camp and wants to learn more about project management; plus, it was in Ukranian and my Ukranian sucks). It turned out the money (which Andre said was assured) would not come in time to make the tee-shirts: it would come literally a day before the camp started, but in time for us to print up certificates (nice ones on heavy card stock with good printing).
So certificates, check, but still needing tee-shirts.
I met this morning with Ivan and his partners at their office and they showed me some videos of the previous work they had done (they have been sponsoring a youth singing contest for four years now) and gave me a budget for the project and then we just talked for about an hour about random stuff, getting to know each other (most of business in Ukraine is getting to know each other). Finally, I asked if he got the price on the tee-shirts and he had. Then I told him that the money from CYI would not come in time for the camp. Ivan looked at his partners, shrugged and said: "well, we can sponsor the tee-shirts, why not?" and his partners nodded.
Boo-yeah!
So in exchange for working on getting a $2,000 and $15,000 grant, respectively, I'm getting certificates and tee-shirts for my climbing camp. It's not really that insidious, we're all just helping each other out and it's all in an effort to do good in Ukraine, but I've found that 99 percent of project management is meeting the right people and getting them on your side.
It's the art of backscratching.