Below is a piece that I wrote to describe the state of affairs when trying to do philanthropic work for the elderly in Russia. Asher Ostrin, the director of JDC’s FSU Department wrote an introduction and conclusion that helps to frame things, and I wanted to share.
Dear all,
Over the last twenty years we were repeatedly told that there were goals that we set for ourselves, and our program in the FSU, that simply could not be met. We would get a hearing and then, in the best case scenario, a condescending smile and a slight shake of the head, and a sendoff along the lines of “good luck”. In other instances there would be a derisive laugh and some comment about our naiveté, and lack of understanding of the prevailing culture. These were the reasonable responses.
But naiveté sometimes has its blessings, and generally we were undeterred in our efforts.
We were told that we could not create a welfare delivery system that is based on voluntarism, as that concept was alien to this population.
We were told that no institution, and especially not a Jewish Community Center, could ever approach financial self-sufficiency. People would not pay.
We were told that that we would never be able to rely on people who were products of a Soviet and post-Soviet system of values to direct our operations at a level that would satisfy us, and our donors.
All were done. The list can continue across various programmatic domains.
But the goal in this weekly is to expose the other side of the coin; to write about something that we thought that by now we could encourage and indeed accomplish even contrary to the skeptics. And yet, we don’t appear to be any closer to our goal in this arena now than we were fifteen years ago.
Winston Churchill once related to the opaque nature of Stalin’s Soviet Union: “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. I am not sure that the subject that follows is quite so difficult to understand, but it continues to vex us after numerous efforts to understand, and then to change this situation.
The topic is philanthropy among wealthy Jews in the FSU. More specifically, it is about the attempt to get wealthy local Jews to begin to share responsibility for indigent elderly Jews. These people of means know the situation. They know the depth of the poverty that afflicts the elderly. They know about the lack of a safety net. They grew up in a society that reserves a special place for the aging. Many have family members and know how they would fare without the assistance of wealthy family members, of whom there are so few. And yet…
Liz Fine, on our Moscow staff, recently wrote about this issue, and her comments follow:
“If it weren’t for the Cyrillic writing in certain parts of today’s Moscow you might think that you’re in any European capital city. I’m writing from a branch of Paul Café, a French chain, where I’m greeted with “Bonjour” instead of “Zdravstvuite.” On Tverskaya, a main thoroughfare, there’s a Starbucks and the Ritz and a Tissot watch store. A cappuccino will set you back the equivalent of $6.00, and in the traffic that crawls by (there is no rushing here) there are more Lexuses than Ladas.
So when American guests stroll these streets they often wonder – where is the need?
The response to this question is “easy”. How often do we spend time in large Western cities and not encounter those who “have missed the boat”? There is poverty here. Real poverty. In a city like Moscow sometimes you have to look for it. So that question is not particularly difficult to answer.
But that leads to a second, perhaps more difficult question: If there are so many Russians who can afford a cappuccino or a Lexus or a Tissot, why aren’t they taking care of their own?
It’s a question that we struggle to answer. There’s no culture of philanthropy in Russia. That’s our mantra. 70 years of Communism eradicated centuries of tradition of Jewish giving. Though profoundly true, this explanation only goes so far.
We’re left with lingering questions of why people aren’t giving. Why aren’t we partnering with non-Jewish organizations that serve the elderly? Why isn’t the state doing more?
Last week, I attended a meeting where it all came together.
As part of my work in JDC’s Moscow office, I work to outreach to other NGOs, particularly Western NGOs with a Russian presence. A natural networker, and a former lobbyist, I thought this part of my job would be no problem, as wherever I am, I’m constantly making connections. But it’s proven to be one of the most difficult parts of my job in Moscow. At times I’ve chalked it up to language barriers or cultural differences, but finding other organizations operating in the same sphere as JDC, that want to work together, has been a constant challenge.
JDC is a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, and once a month Am Cham convenes a “NGO-Corporate Partnership.” I’ve attended these meetings for the past year, and they are typically attended by 25-30, representing NGOs like JDC and United Way, along with smaller charities, and American corporations like Citibank, John Deere, and PepsiCo.
Topics for discussion vary from current NGO legislation, to PR, to substantive areas of work, like welfare for children. Am Cham professionals are excellent, and they regularly bring together the best and brightest, as well as those working on the cutting edge of the business and philanthropic world to discuss meaningful issues of the day.
This month I was thrilled to see that the topic for discussion was “Helping the Elderly”. Despite Russia’s rapidly aging population and a potential pension crisis, it’s a subject that has not been touched since I started attending meetings. I invited the director of our welfare department to join us – hoping she could make connections both with other organizations that help the elderly and companies that might be interested in supporting those causes.
I was more than a little disappointed to walk into the room and find that attendance was about half of what I had come to expect from this group. Of that number half of the people in the room were the committee chairs, the speakers, and JDC representatives.
The committee invited representatives of two organizations to speak. The first “Starost V Radost” (Old Age is a Joy), works in nursing homes in the regions. The second was “Dobroe Delo” (Good Thing).
It was difficult for the director of Starost V Radost to quantify their work, but she was able to tell us that they spend about $8,300 a month or $100,000 a year. Projects include minor renovations of nursing homes (which in Russia are horrific places where the lonely elderly go to die), providing some pen pal and friendly visiting, as well as some small amounts of emergency social assistance. In five years, she estimates that they’ve served around 3,500 clients.
Dobroe Delo has been around for 12 years and estimates it has served a total of about 7,000 clients during that time. It provides social assistance, including some basic homecare for a small number of clients.
These two organizations, that in total have served no more than 11,000 clients across Russia during the past few years, are seen as leaders in providing services to the elderly.
Neither of the organizations receives government support.
In contrast, JDC spends about $20 million serving more than 20,000 elderly clients in Moscow (only Moscow) every year(!)
It was suddenly clear: The reason I have struggled to find partners for our work with the elderly, is that there simply are not any. In the biggest city in Russia, with a population of at least 12 million people, and a demographically graying population, there is not a single NGO that is doing work for the elderly on anywhere close to the scale that JDC operates. The number of elderly being reached by the collective efforts of Moscow NGOs is miniscule.
I was glad that I invited our welfare director. Not because there was the opportunity for her to make connections, but because there was the opportunity for her to share her expertise. There was no one else in the room who had any clue how to provide services for the elderly in a sophisticated, efficient manner.
Quickly the conversation turned to what we could do about it – not the substance of providing care, but in generating interest. The co-chair of the committee, the director of United Way, noted the poor attendance and remarked that this happened any time the committee tried to discuss the issue of the elderly. During the past few years, attitudes toward philanthropy in general in Russia have improved. People are starting to give and a photograph of an ailing orphan moves people to open their pockets.
But in a society where the babushka is supposed to hold a special place of honor, no one is willing to open his or her pockets to other people’s grandmothers.
There were very few corporate representatives in the room, but one woman noted that every year, her company polls employees for a corporate philanthropy initiative. It provides a list of causes and asks its employees to vote on where the firm should spend its dollars that year.
Every year, causes for children come in first.
Every year, causes for the elderly finish dead last, indeed a very distant last.”
This completes Liz’s report. Almost. As we are shortly before Pesach, we can quote from the Haggadah- all of this, and Dayenu! Each part of the story by itself is troubling. Taken together, a sad situation. But there is one more piece. A final note by the woman she quotes about a poll in her company that will determine directions for their corporate giving. If the above is not painful enough, consider her closing comment about the poll:
“Every year, welfare for homeless animals places higher than welfare for hungry and lonely seniors.”
Now, a final note on JDC’s behalf. Through the years “they” told us there would be few volunteers, no fee for service, and no cadre of Jewish professionals. “They” were wrong.
Here too, regarding support for the elderly, we will make it happen.
Shabbat shalom,
Asher
