Experts assess foreign aid to Ukraine, share "lessons learned" (11/27/05)

Experts assess foreign aid to Ukraine, share "lessons learned"

by Oksana Zakydalsky

TORONTO - "North American and European Aid to Ukraine" was the title of a two-part panel discussion held at the Center for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto on October 21.

The first panel was titled "A Critical Assessment" and was handled by panelists Janina Wedel (George Mason School of Public Policy), Alexandra Hrycak (Reed College) and Danylo Bilak (United Nations Development Program) and chaired by Olga Andriewsky (Trent University).

Prof. Wedel is the author of the prize-winning and controversial book "Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe" (Palgrave, 2001, second edition). As a social anthropologist, she aims to understand aid processes rather than the projects shaped by aid. She said that public policy debates on aid tend to look at "how much" and "for what," but she was interested in looking at the agents of aid, the relationships formed between donors and recipients, and the affects of the relationships on aid outcomes.

To have the intended results, the donor has to understand the informal social networks of the recipient country and how they shaped the society and its institutions, Prof. Wedel explained. The critical word in her analysis was "disconnect." She noted that "There existed a giant disconnect between East and West, forged by the Cold War and exacerbated by barriers of language, culture, distance and information." Donors did not take into account the fact that the former Communist countries were not Third World populations but were well-educated and highly literate, but didn't necessarily know what to do.

The whole aid industry has brought about the emergence of global elites - power brokers who have more in common with each other than they do with particular nations, and had produced a "global community of democratic rhetoric," Prof. Wedel said. In summary, her view was that most foreign aid to the former Communist countries has been ill-planned, poorly executed and misdirected.

Prof. Alexandra Hrycak's comments were largely in agreement with Prof. Wedel's analysis, and she focused on the role of aid in the creation of transnational networks, using women's issues as a specific example. New organizations in Ukraine were planted by Westerners and dealt with issues - domestic violence, trafficking, entrepreneurship - that needed attention. But they failed in providing grassroots empowerment. Instead, "professional NGOs" arose, intermediaries who were positioned between the grassroots and the donors, but were not networked domestically.

As an example, Prof. Hrycak mentioned that La Strada - Ukraine, formed in Ukraine in 1997, was founded by La Strada International, based in Italy. For the years the years 2005-2007, La Strada International has a budget of 5.7 million euros but has no ties to local women's organizations. Because U.S. corporations served as a model of its organizational structure, the link established was between professionals in Ukraine and professionals in other countries.

Prof. Hrycak gave one concrete example: when women's centers were established by La Strada - Ukraine in various regions, donors decided hotlines for women at risk were needed, like the ones set up in comparable Western centers. These hotlines remained completely unused - the idea of calling someone one does not know for advice is so foreign to Ukrainians that the hotlines were a total bust.

Although there is a dense horizontal network in Ukraine of women's organizations, many aid-funded NGOs bypass and ignore them and create vertical structures tied to international bodies, Prof. Hrycak pointed out.

Mr. Bilak's topic was technical assistance in Ukraine - where it's been and where it should go. He said that the Orange Revolution was proof of the effectiveness of technical assistance and that now the aim of technical assistance should be to capture the energy of the maidan (Independence Square) as the power structures have not caught up to where the people are.

According to Mr. Bilak, there are three main challenges for the further development of technical assistance. First of all, there is a need to build in accountability and decentralization in order to address the issue of corruption, a governance problem. Secondly, foreign "experts" should stay home, while technical assistance aid should help facilitate locally generated NGOs. In the long view, he said, one needs to work with a government that is interested in output rather than having a "grab and run" attitude.

The second session of the panel had as its subtitle, "Lessons Learned" and was chaired by Prof. Frank Sysyn (Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies) and included Bruce Steen (country manager, Canadian International Development Agency - CIDA), Ruslana Wrzesnewskyj (president, Help Us Help the Children) and Marta Baziuk (Winrock International, a private NGO funded by the Rockefeller family).

In the last three years Canadian foreign aid has undergone various reviews and one of the "lessons learned" was that the aid was so dispersed in terms of countries supported that it often prevented Canada in having an impact. Mr. Steen explained that under Canada's new International Policy Statement, CIDA has selected 25 developing countries as targets for aid, with Ukraine being the only European one among them.

"Developing countries where Canada can make a difference" is the new slogan for aid disbursement. Ukraine is a development partner identified in the new policy for several reasons: it has seized upon reform initiatives, it is using aid effectively, and Canada is particularly well positioned to offer the needed expertise there. Aid to Ukraine will now focus on four main sectors: governance, health, private-sector development and environmental sustainability, Mr. Bilak noted.

Ms. Wrzesnewskyj's organization has been helping children in Ukraine for over 10 years through direct aid to nearly 200 orphanages and a camping program for 500 children every summer. Although the organization uses Canadian and American volunteers, Ms. Wrzesnewskyj's main "lesson learned" was the necessity to stick to the grassroots approach: to develop Ukrainian partners and provide them with a "train the trainer" program.

Some of her organizational tips included: make the locals look good, boost morale, celebrate victories, share your goals, network in Ukraine and work around corruption. She cautioned that one should expect resistance, especially meddling local authorities. Hence, it is wise to stay independent and work directly with people in Ukraine actually involved in the program. But, most of all, she said, in order to work successfully in Ukraine one needs perseverance and consistency.

Ms. Baziuk, who worked on a Women's Business Support Center project in Ukraine for Winrock gave, as her main "lesson learned" the advice that process matters. "There are no shortcuts to effective implementation of a program," she said. For example, in order to teach the concept of self-help, her project helped women entrepreneurs by giving them seed money to start businesses. These women then served as role models for self-help. Another lesson, like Ms Wrzesnewskyj's was: find and foster local leaders, Ms. Baziuk said.

Prof. Sysyn added that CIUS, with only $50,000 per year, has focused on academic aid with some successes: setting up the Institute of Historical Research at Lviv University, bringing researchers to Canada on the Kolasky scholarships and sending researchers from Lviv to Warsaw on the Stelmach program.

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