Organization

Building CCI’s network in the USSR and Russia has been sometimes dangerous and challenging, but always exciting! Starting with no contacts and encounters with KGB, intrepid CCI volunteers were determined to expand the ranks of citizen diplomacy and build programs to weld the two nations’ citizenry together.

1983 – 1990 CCI leaders spread out in eight Soviet Republics with their mission to create peace, not war. Soviet-citizen coordinators were set up to handle the growing work in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Tashkent, Yerevan and Minsk. These unpaid ordinary Soviets organized informal people-to-people programs for CCI delegations, and ultimately became the base of CCI’s expanding work.

1988 – 1989 CCI’s Soviets Meet Middle America Program greatly extended CCI’s contact base attracting Soviet citizens from Siberia and the Russian Far East.

1993 – 1997 USAID requested CCI concentrate its work on Russia. Six Russian regional CCI offices were established in Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Ekaterinburg, Voronezh, north Moscow Oblast (Dubna), plus CCI’s headquarters in St. Petersburg, thus markedly expanding CCI’s citizen networks within Russia.

1998 In addition to the original six regional offices now known as “CCI Russian Partner Offices,” CCI developed a seventh Partner Office in Vladivostok, Russia’s Far East.

1998 – Present: In 1998 USAID funding ended for the Russian offices, and they were forced to become self-sustaining. They accomplished this feat by charging PEP delegates fees for recruitment and training prior to travel. To recruit PEP candidates and sustain their offices, staff traveled deep into their surrounding regions to solicit “point persons” in cities where PEP had never operated. Soon “satellite operations” sprung up with Russian offices managing them, thus bringing more income to the offices and rapidly expanding CCI’s networks beyond formerly projected goals.

Close to 50 CCI satellite operations across Russia’s eleven time zones now give CCI coverage throughout the expanse of Russia. PEP alumni hail from 417 Russian cities in 63 of Russia’s 89 regions.