Hi CCI Followers!

The first delegation of Russians Meet Mainstream Americans! (RMMA-pronounced Rama) is in flight from Atlanta to Dallas. Four Russian women from four different Russian regions met for the first time at the Moscow Airport. They flew to Atlanta where they were picked up by CCI board member Don Chapman and his wife Julie and whisked off to their large, two-story ranch home on acreage at the edge of Newnan. Two families hosted them, the Chapman’s being one of them.

Early the next morning they were at Newnan High School speaking with upper classman students who had no hesitation in asking questions. Don reports that a lively exchange took place: “Our youth aren’t hampered with past stereotypes like the older generation. They are looking toward the future.” From there on, the Chapman van moved from meeting to meeting, day after day.

The Newnan Rotary Club hosted them where a leading Rotarian in the city placed them at different tables to meet with as many Rotarians as possible. Lena Novomeyskaya from Yekaterinburg took Rotary to her city many years ago. That club is stellar (I am an honorary member) and since then Lena has taken Rotary to other Ural mountain cities where the Rotary concept has become solidly ensconced.

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Russians Meet Mainstream Americans! (RMMA-pronounced Rama) will launch on March 20, 2018when a delegation of four enterprising Russians arrive at the Atlanta Airport! To answer the first question usually asked … No, they have nothing to do with the Russian government, except of course that they vote.

Lena Novomeiskaya from Yekaterinburg, Natasha Ivanova from Krasnodar in the south, Tatyana Bukharina from Yalta in Crimea and Elena Ivanova from St. Petersburg will travel to the U.S. as “citizen diplomats.” They come at the invitation of the Center for Citizen Initiatives (CCI) to attend discussion groups (up to three a day) where they will answer questions, share ideas and seek solutions with counterpart American citizens. They will visit five U.S. areas: Atlanta, Dallas, Fort Worth, several cities in the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington D.C. They will live in American homes, help cook meals, be transported in family cars and have hundreds of meetings in public forums, civic clubs, homes of volunteers, state official offices and offices of Congress members.

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Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Due to rapidly escalating tensions in U.S.-Russia relations, CCI is restarting or increasing “bottom-up” diplomacy programs with the intention to trigger citizen awareness and response in both nations. Working with other experts and organizations, we may be able to have an impact far greater than we can now envision.

Two programs are now in motion:

• Americans travel to Russia on CCI’s “signature” trips which are investigative, not cultural. These trips will be expanded in 2018. They will go to Moscow and St. Petersburg to meet with experts and counterparts to understand how Russia is developing, surviving the sanctions and what they think about U.S.-Russia relations. From there, between the two capitals, small subgroups of Americans travel to as many as eight different Russian regions to spend days assessing how outlying Russians think, work, build businesses, deal with corruption and bureaucrats, see U.S.-Russia relations and more. The large group then convenes in St. Petersburg to share information and confer on how to generate solutions, deal with stereotypical thinking and develop public awareness.

• Bring Russian citizens to our U.S. cities to hold discussions across our country through Russians Meet Mainstream Americans! (RMMA).  See details in the next message. We ran this program in the 1980’s with terrific success. It dissolved decades of misinformation between our two nations and its peoples in two short years.

All the best,

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives