short meeting in Kazan, Russia OST on Development of Student Work Brigades

[Raffi Aftandelian]

Greeting colleagues,

Galina Tsarkova and Mikhail Pronin shared this week the story of a
short 5 hours OST meeting that took place in oil-rich Kazan, Tatarstan, about 12 hours by
train from Moscow.

The OST meeting was sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Education and
the Tatarstan Ministry for Youth Affairs. For us it is significant
that a federal-level ministry sponsored an OST meeting.

As many know, in many ways the political climate here is deteriorating, especially in the
run-up to the presidential (s)elections in 2008. And, some say that
the Kremlin is getting more and more heavy-handed in its dealings with
NGO's because it doesn't want a  "colored" revolution
(Ukraine had its Orange Revolution; Georgia - a rose one.) in Russia.

So, the more we can refer to a (positive) body of experience in working with
government in using OST, the better.

The OST meeting was on the topic of:

the Development of Student Work Brigades: Issues and Opportunities.

Student Work Brigades ("stroitelnye otryady") are something like a paid summer (or year-round)
internship. Students studying at the Railroad Workers Institute could
get paid practical experience working on trains. Other students worked
on major civil engineering projects building oil pipelines in the
Soviet period. Or, they worked in hospitals. And the money they
earned/earn now can be quite a bit of pocket change.

There were 385 participants from 69 regions (!) of Russia (Russia has
some 88 or 89 provinces). The participants included regional directors
of Student Work Brigade organizations, university level directors, and
students themselves, and others.

Galina and Mikhail arranged to have one of technical assistants greet
participants by blowing soap bubbles and saying "welcome to OS", much
like when they ran a strategic planning OST meeting for a large
Russian financial company recently.

And as with the financial OST meeting, the participants began blowing
bubbles during the meeting themselves and also shook the
(Indonesian) thunder-callers (I bought 5 of these musical instruments at a head
shop at the OSonOS in Halifax on a whim once Eva Svensson showed the
one she bought; they make great gifts for OST facilitators). Since then, these thunder-callers have started to be
used alongside or in the place of temple bells in opening space.

Among some of the topics:
Young women in Student Construction Brigades
Creating a Common Information/Communication Space
Getting Concrete Assistance from the Authorities

We all know that 5 hours is much too little for such an OST meeting,
but that's all they could get.

I hope that Galina and Mikhail will add to the story.
Photos from the OST meeting have been added to the flickr.com
photo-hosting service and tagged with "openspacetech" They should
eventually show up on the reworked OSW.org site (I absolutely love
that feature, Michael (Herman), and have added it to my blogs.

Below are a few photos from the OST meeting:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/74114364/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/74114404/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/74114236/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/74121869/

Of course, there is much more to the story.
Participants, I recall Galina and Mikhail telling me, said "Don't
think this OST meeting is over now that you have closed the space!"

Warmly,
from (an unseasonably warm and slushy) Moscow,
raffi

---------------------------------------
Raffi Aftandelian
consultant
essenceworks consulting group
organizational health and balance
Moscow






                          mailto:raffi at bk.ru

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