Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 18 – Across the North
Caucasus, there are hundreds if not thousands of NGOs registered with the
authorities. Most are inactive and some exist only in order to extract money
from the government. But dozens of these
organizations are active and playing a key role in helping people often on
shoestring budgets and despite official opposition.
Yekaterina Ageyeva, a Moscow specialist
on this sector in this region, tells journalist Ravil Safin that the NGOs are
today playing many of the roles that nationality-based groups did in the 1990s.
Those have become less active, and NGOs are able to get some grants and
official support when the others are not (kavtoday.ru/article/5454).
The NGO sector despite growth in
recent years still forms only about one percent of the Russian economy, and the
government via grants needs to do more, Ageyeva says. But it has to be careful
because some of the NGOs operating now are doing so only to make money rather
than do any good.
Savin, a journalist for the Caucasus
Today portal spoke with the leaders of four NGOs operating in the North
Caucasus. Svetlana Bayrmkulova, head of
the My Angel group in Karachayevo-Cherkessia, says her group focuses on
children who suffer from genetic diseases and accident and provides what help
it can in securing them daily support.
Members of her group travel through
the region to identify children with handicaps who aren’t getting the support
they need and working with them to secure such status and the funds it provides
as well as working with government and private organizations that may be able
to help such children.
Yekaterina Borisevich, head of the All-Caucasus
Youth Training Center works primarily with official agencies to help young
people find ways to participate in organized sports activities, something officials
see as a means of preventing them from possibly falling under the influence of
radical Islamists.
Her group also provide social and
psychological assistance to women and children who have suffered from violence
in the home or as a result of their religious convictions. She says that this
is one of the most important problems in the republics of the North Caucasus.
Malikat Dzhabirova, who heads the Mother
and Children NGO, says her group’s focus is on young women and on providing
them with information they aren’t getting from other sources about their
rights, their health, and their defense.
Her group works closely with a similar body in Moscow. If a North
Caucasus woman calls there, she is referred to Dzhbirova’s group.
“We do not have out own crisis
center, but we cooperate with various government and non-governmental
organizations” that do. Lately, she says, her colleagues have been providing
psychological assistance to women who have suffered violence in the home.
And Elina Slavinskaya, head of the
Psyche Group does the same. She points out that now her colleagues are having
to deal with panic about the pandemic, not its real dimensions which are bad
enough but about rumors that have left many women and children unable to
function normally. “This is not a medical factor,” she says; rather it is a “psychological”
one.
No comments:
Post a Comment