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Two years ago, in our first issue of Civil Society . . . East and West, we
described Ron Pope'’s Serendipity project in the Russian city of Vladimir.
With a team of Russian and American volunteers, Pope, a professor of
political science at Illinois State University (ISU) in
Bloomington-Normal, had constructed a ranch-style American home in the
center of the city during the summer of 1992. In July 1993, on the first
anniversary of the inauguration of Amerikanskii Dom, a local newspaper,
Molva, paid tribute to the project in an editorial humorously titled, The
American Home Has Stood for a Year and Not Collapsed.
Molva called special attention to the attitude motivating Serendipity, which it described this way:
* Internships arranged by Serendipityfor college students or recent grads have yielded positive results. In one case, two ISU students assembled economic data about the city and developed a Foreign Visitors Guide to Vladimir, as a tool for promoting tourism, trade and investment. As a next step, Serendipity is looking for people and resources to organize regular day and overnight tours from Moscow to Vladimir and Suzdal, another historical Russian city that is nearby.
* Business training is another area in which Serendipity is involved. It has brought specialists from the U.S. to give short workshops in marketing and management. ISU students working together with Russian peers have made an inventory of the region ’s retail outlets, surveying customers, store owners and others. This data was later used in retail trade workshops offered by Serendipity.
* Police training programs involving members of the ISU Police and
Criminal Justice Departments and militia (police) officers from Vladimir
were among the first exchanges that Serendipity carried out at its
inception in 1990. Colonel Vladimir Sergevnin of the Vladimir Special
Militia School taught a course on Russian law enforcement at ISU in the
spring of 1993, and this led to two Law and Justice trips to Vladimir for
25 American law enforcement specialists in 1993 and 1994.
Recently, two officers from Vladimir’s Special Militia School, Maj. Alexei
Gregoriev and Senior Lt. Anna Korovina, completed 14 weeks of training and
observation in police procedures at the U. of Illinois Police Training
Institute, followed by hands-on experience with the police departments of
Bloomington, Normal, Rockford and Chicago.
* A successful remodeling business has also sprung from Serendipity in Vladimir, and may eventually turn into a full-scale construction firm. Doug Parker, a member of the Bloomington-Normal (IL) Home Builders Association, helped construct Amerikanskii Dom in 1992. Subsequently he invited Andrei Koretsky, one of the project’s Russian participants, to visit Illinois and gain more experience working for his construction firm.
Today Serendipity'’s remodeling business, headed by Koretsky, employs nine
Russians full-time and others on a part-time basis. They have installed
Georgia-Pacific paneling and Armstrong suspended ceilings in banks and
government offices in Vladimir. As Russian incomes rise and domestic
suppliers of materials and tools until recently a major bottleneck come on
line, this business is sure to grow.
This account describes only some of the creative work Serendipity is doing. We also describe Vladimir’s Ensemble Rus, an accomplished folk dance and musical group which Serendipity is promoting.
For further information, including opportunities to serve in one of Serendipity’s programs in Vladimir, contact:
Dr. Ronald Pope, President
Serendipity: Russian Consulting
and Development
1403 Kingsridge Dr.
Normal, IL 61761
Ph: (309) 454-2364
Fax: (309) 452-6332
E-mail: 73123,[email protected]
For more information or to order a subscription, see our publications page.
The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/95-02/seren.htm
Last updated: March 28 1996
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