Cost Free is the Key to Global Youth Service Day 2009

FLEX alumni across Eurasia used the economic crisis to their advantage during the 21st annual Global Youth Service Day (April 24-26) by treating the international community service initiative as an opportunity to conduct cost-free projects that assisted people and places in need. A wide variety of parks, beaches, orphanages, elderly homes, highways and secondary schools were the direct beneficiaries of the more than 18 projects completed either at no cost, or with the support of local administrations, in-kind contributions, and alumni’s personal donations.

From the Shail district of Azerbaijan where alumni cleaned trash from the shores of the Caspian sea, to the city of Novyi Rozdil in Ukraine, where FLEX offered new copies of in-demand books in the public library, GYSD 2009 highlighted the continuing ability of program alumni to respond creatively and intuitively to a fiscal pinch, while still maintaining the usual high quality of their events and activities. In addition, four alumni were awarded funds through the FLEX/ECA Matching Grants program to undertake projects requiring additional support.

Removing accumulated trash from public parks was one of the most popular activities that FLEX alumni undertook during the GYSD weekend. St. Petersburg got the clean-ups off to an early start on April 18 under the direction of ECA/FLEX Matching Grant awardee Anna Gvozdareva ’07, who led ten alumni in sprucing up the area around the Hermitage Museum, and preparing it for May-holiday flowers. Anna also helped Galina Lesnikova ’06 oversee ten alumni who, with the assistance of the Public Affairs section of the U.S Embassy, Green Peace and RotaryEco, collected fifty bags of garbage in the Yuntolovsky Lesopark nature preserve.

On April 23, through the project “Clean the Face of Kyiv,” 35 young volunteers (21 of whom were FLEX), along with local dancers, musicians and journalists helped to collect bottles and other waste from the historical Andriyivskyy Uzviz section of the city, before holding a concert. Kyiv alumni kept up the vibrant GYSD spirit on April 25, when they assembled with more than 100 people to clean the shores of Turkhanov Island. Meanwhile, on the same day in Sevastopol, Alumni Coordinator Irina Ogay ’04 organized a clean-up, followed by a game of Ultimate Frisbee, for 21 people at the popular picnic area Maksimova Dacha. To the West, in Kharkiv, Artem Sokolskyy, four alumni and four of their friends enjoyed an American-style barbeque after cleaning the Hryhorovsky Bor forest. Thirteen hundred kilometers north in Novocheboksarsk, recent Russia alumna Anastasiya Mikhaylova and her team of volunteers cleaned up the highway near local School #18 on April 26.

Yet clean-ups were hardly the only focal points of GYSD; many alumni opted to beautify the environment by holding plantings. In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Jibek Nurdin kyzy ’08 and Aizat Jakybalieva ’07, continued their work with the Voenno Antonovka orphanage and its residents by planting flowers in the area outside the orphanage on April 26. On the same day in Kazan, Yuliana Amanova ’03, Liliya Iskhakova ’03, and Leyla Nurieva ’03, along with a group of Kazan ACCESS Microscholarship students from low income families, their parents, volunteers, and veterans gathered at the Second City Hospital to plant more than thirty trees, which had been supplied by the city administration. The students and alumni then made a trip to the Kazan State Power Engineering University, where representatives from the Engineering Ecology Department volunteered to help them test soil pH levels, and study the effects of soil pollution. To the north, in Moscow, Shamil Valiev ’04 assisted orphans, alumni and children at Orphanage #1865 in planting trees. On May 2, in Vladivostok, Alexandra Kulik ’05 dispatched the vegetable garden prep work for a local elderly home.

These activities took place among a vast array of additionally resourceful initiatives, such as painting a kindergarten playground in Volgograd, Russia (the brainchild of Marina Khornikhina ’07), hosting a professional development workshop on teaching techniques in Mary, Turkmenistan (Lyubov Lakomova ’06’s grant project), and assisting children at the Taganrog Hospital as they underwent facial surgery (an aspect of Darya Skolozubova ’06 and Margarita Bondareva ’06’s “Operation Smile.”) All of these initiatives show that, despite the economic downturn, FLEX alumni always have an abundance of resources to put a smile on their community members’ faces.