Civil Society: Documentation and Analysis

This is a translation of an article written by Tamara Epanchintseva, executive director of the Krasnoyarsk Center for Community Partnerships. The article looks at school-community foundations and school boards as effective mechanisms for developing school-community partnerships. The original Russian version of the article was published within the past year in the national education newspaper, Teachers Gazette (Uchitelskaya Gazeta).

Man has two worlds:
One that created him,
The other that Man
Has been creating himself
From time immemorial
--N. Zabolotsky

The world which has created us is not exactly lenient to us. Yet, any crisis situation can be approached constructively (as people's wisdom, expressed in a saying, goes: "There is no bad without a grain of good"). No one would want to argue with that.

Let us try to look from this constructive point of view at the situation in which Russian schools have lived for a few years now, i. e. the situation of a chronic shortage of funds. It is widely believed that it is the government that is in charge of the funding for schools. This thought is typical and--we might as well admit it-- comforting psychologically. It means that the principal is not responsible for the calamitous situation of his school, at least as far as finances go and a lack of finances allows us to excuse many things. Aside from that, many educators find attractive the "destitute but proud" position, as Ms. E. Kulik, the principal of the Divnogorsk Boarding School, once put it. This position at least has some undefeatable dignity about it, and the remainders of dignity are the last line which we, teachers, are willing to defend to the death.

Yet, many principals who truly take school affairs to heart, and not just in their official capacity, are now more and more inclined to give up that position. This, it seems, is that "good" without which there is no kind of "evil". Constant resource constraints have led to many educators changing their attitudes, a process which can be quite painful at times. One school principal, a participant at a session of the Community School Development Training Program (please see the note below), described the feelings he had during the training as "very disturbed." We traditionally perceived the position of a "petitioner" trying to convince a rich and influential outsider that for some reason they should fund a particular program of the school as humiliating. Of course, it is much more comfortable to consider oneself "destitute but proud." Yet, over the years of financial troubles many of us, teachers and school administrators have "grown up" to realize the importance of building up partner relationships with parents, businesses, government, and the entire community in which the school operates.

School-community foundations and school boards of trustees are possible forms of developing such relationships. However, if a school-community foundation is assigned the role of just a "piggy bank" accumulating parents' funds, it will result in 90% of other lawful opportunities for additional non-budgetary funding not being used. Such other lawful opportunities are great. Evidence of this comes in concrete examples of work being done by existing school-community foundations in Siberia.

N. A. Kharchenko, principal of school #187, Novosibirsk, says:

"The money that parents give are being accumulated on lawful grounds by the Foundation as charitable donations. Interestingly, the Foundation began its work not with collecting donations but with a large scale charitable event: the Foundation insured all the students against an accident for 24 hours. And it was only thereafter that the Foundation asked parents for help in return. And such help was provided. One of the parents talked the management of his enterprise into donating 200 tons of sand. The Foundation exchanged this material for goods and materials the school needed. The Parents' Foundation repaired the school's gym--200 m2 of new flooring were laid! Having learned that some families cannot afford to feed children for days in a row, the Foundation arranged help for such families: a free loaf of bread every day. As it turned out, some young teachers needed such help, too.

"This academic year the Foundation is also planning to open a secondhand store. The first item of clothing was donated by the principal, an example followed by both teachers and parents. The next step will be the school students collecting clothes from the neighborhood residents. It will be their volunteer campaign. Another planned purchase is a truck for the school. Apart from covering the school's material necessities the Foundation will also keep raising funds for the school.

"We have been able to get the Heads of the District Administration and District Education Department on the Foundation's Board of Trustees. Now I deal with them not only as my bosses but also as the school's trustees. As a result, for the first time in many years funds have been found for renovation of the school sewage system. And this, I believe, is just the beginning. I greatly look forward to this process. Meanwhile, the Foundation is wasting no time. It has involved neighborhood residents in collecting signatures under the protest petition against the parking lot which is located right in the center of the residential area and is of no use for the neighborhood residents. The only condition on which they would agree to tolerate a parking lot there is on-going charitable aid to the school from the owners. Soon, this petition will be presented to the local government. Next in line is the owner of the local market whom we also hope to get involved in charitable giving. And there are more resources the Foundation may exploit to raise more non-budgetary funds to support our school."

Having successfully established partner relationships within the community, the principal has been able to raise substantial amounts of additional funds. Who would have thought that it would be accomplished by the person who said 11/2 years ago how uncomfortable one feels dealing with businesses and governments. Indeed, if we want to change the world, we are to start with ourselves.

Initiatives of school-community foundations are diverse, depending on local situations in different places. The Trustees of the Parabel Secondary School (Tomsk Oblast) have organized paid-for computer courses for grown-ups--a good source of supplementary funds for the school-community foundation. L. Mityuklyayeva, the principal of Zheleznogorsk gymnasium #91, tells how the gymnasium and its Charitable Foundation went beyond the school premises, began to build up partner relationships with the community and thus discovered new diverse resources, and not only material, but intellectual and informational as well.

"We realized", she says, "that the neighborhood would actively help the gymnasium if we helped it, too. We realized that it was impossible to create an ideal "micro-environment" merely within the gymnasium. One has to think in terms of a better life for the entire neighborhood, and it is achievable. In order to attain that goal, the gymnasium and the Foundation offered to create a territorial self-government by electing building committees and a Neighborhood Council for neighborhood residents. Having done such large-scale work with the community we identified new ways of co-operation with City authorities and got them involved as partners in implementation of our programs. In particular, the City authorities assumed the task of setting up a public gym on the premises of our gymnasium."

All the above examples show a new role for the school. In such a school children and parents are not just consumers of educational services, but participants in the processes of school and community development. The school becomes the hub of community life, receives various resources from the community which are then used to perfect its core activity, namely, education. At the same time many schools have realized their socially significant role as a factor preventing the processes of disintegration of society, loosening of its ties, "atomization," as sociologists put it, as no new healthy generation can grow up in a society torn by dissension and conflicts. So, the beautiful idea of creating a mini-society which would live in harmony is inseparable from the school's core activity as an educational institution.

Why is it that the Boards of Trustees of school-community foundations who have received training at Community School Development training sessions are successful, whereas other boards set up in compliance with the President's Decree (#1134, "On Additional Measures For The Support Of Compulsory Education Institutions In The Russian Federation," August 31, 1999) are likely to remain just another superfluous management bodies? That question was asked at a meeting of the Economic Council of the RF Ministry of Education where the Krasnoyarsk Center for Community Partnerships (KCCP) presented its Program.

Really, why? Isn't it because the procedure of establishing the boards described above was democratic right from the very first step? "It took us two years of painstaking work to set up a workable Foundation and get the maximum possible number of parents involved in its work," says L. Mityuklyayeva. "We were forming a favorable public opinion using all forms of communication with the parents, including various printed materials." Just an order by the principal is not enough to create such a Board. No less important is the role of training which school representatives receive at KCCP where they master techniques and skills of non-commercial work.

But apparently the most important prerequisite for success of a Board is a mechanism ensuring the Board's impact on the processes going on in the school as the Board is to act as the executive body of the school-community foundation.

That is why KCCP's experience was discussed so actively at the meeting of the Economic Council of the RF Ministry of Education. In particular, one of the Council members said that it was for the first time since the President's Decree had been issued that he saw a legally impeccable plan for establishment of school boards of trustees as the executive body of a school-based NGO. Many schools may indeed find useful this specific method of establishment of a successful Board of Trustees which not only attracts community's resources to support secondary education but also establishes traditions and practices of school-based civic activity.

That is why the Economic Council passed the following resolution: To approve the Krasnoyarsk Center for Community Partnerships' programs promoting establishment of school boards of trustees which are to facilitate an active co-operation between schools and the communities they are operating in, and to help raise additional non-budgetary funds and other resources. To recommend to the Department of Regional Educational Policy and the Department of Economy of the Ministry of Education that they take account that experience when preparing draft regulations and designing methodological aids on how to establish secondary school boards of trustees."

How to organize public management of schools and how to turn boards of trustees into a mechanism of real trusteeship? Mr. A. I. Adamsky (Chair of the Federal Pilot Projects Board, Director of Evrika Institute for Educational Policies and a reporter for "1st of September" an all Russian newspaper for secondary schools) believes these questions to be of the utmost importance. He posed them for a wide discussion in his article about the All-Russian Conference of Educators which was held at the State Kremlin Palace, Moscow, on January 14 and 15.

KCCP has its own answers to those questions, and its ways seem to promise great success, evidence whereof is the experience accumulated by schools in the nine regions of Siberia involved in the Siberian community school movement.

T. A. Epanchintseva
Executive Director
The Krasnoyarsk Center for Community Partnerships
January 2000

Note: The Community School Development Training Program was developed by and is conducted by KCCP with its US partner, ECHO Inc. The program is for school teachers & administrators and community activists. The entire program is 1 school year, with 2 five day training sessions, inter-session site visits, on-going consultations and support. The goal of the training is to give participating schools the skills, materials and support to democratize their schools and to help them to realize their potential as local community resource centers which act as incubators for grass roots activism and philanthropy and as civic forums for the exploration of local, national, and global issues. Topics of the training include the principles of community education, which is an education philosophy and an approach to community development, democratic pedagogy, including how to integrate the values and practices of a democratic civil society into the education process, school-based community development, formation of mutually beneficial school-community (formal and informal) partnerships, the third sector, volunteerism, development of a school-community foundation, community organizing skills, and NGO management/development issues.

In 9 regions of Siberia over the last three years, the Siberian community school model (the basic tenets of which are democratic education, school-community partnerships, and volunteerism) has been successfully and uniquely used by both city and village schools in about 70 communities in Siberia. This model has drawn upon the worldwide community school movement, Russia's tradition of zemstvo and its history of self-governance, and of pre-revolution school boards of trustees as well as the third sector and democratic education experience of KCCP and its US partner, ECHO, Inc. Over the last couple of years the seeds of a Siberian community school association were planted. Discussions about an association started as a result of the KCCP-ECHO community school training programs which effectively allowed for the opportunity for an exchange of ideas and experiences by participants. Winter 1999, KCCP, ECHO and community educators started a comprehensive initiative to form a volunteer-driven professional Siberian community education association.

A school-based NGO (such as a school-community foundation) is one possible form of the mutually beneficial school-community partnership encouraged by the Siberian Community School. These foundations which have chartered missions generally covering the development of the material base of the school and improvement of living conditions in the micro-raion. Founders of these funds can be any residents older than 18 years old. The governing boards of these funds, which run the funds between meetings of the founders, usually number between 7-15 educators, parents and other residents who on a volunteer basis implement the policy laid out by the assembly of the fund's founders, and develop and implement the fund's work plan and plan for allocation of its financial support.

The Krasnoyarsk Center for Community Partnerships (KCCP), a registered Krasnoyarsk Krai non-commercial organization, is a school-based community resource center in Siberia. It is dedicated to the growth of grassroots civic activism through the development of community schools. The center was founded on the belief that democracy and civil society reforms are sustainable only if accompanied by vigorous grassroots citizen education and engagement and was created to be a model for school-based community development and a resource center for democratic schools. KCCP opened its doors in October 1996 as a result of an initiative of ECHO, Inc. and local educators and NGO activists. KCCP focuses its community school development work on the following three areas: formation of active mutually beneficial school-community partnerships; development of volunteerism; and democratization of schools and classrooms. In 1999-2000, KCCP's projects have been supported by the Eurasia Foundation, the C.S. Mott Foundation (through ECHO, Inc.), the Open Society Institute's East East Program and through volunteer activities by scores of Krasnoyarsk youth and adults.

If you would like to receive more information about the KCCP or Siberian community schools or the Siberian community school model, please contact us at:

© 2000. Krasnoyarsk Center for Community Partnerships.

Last updated:    April 2000

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