HISTORIC EFFORTS AND COMMITTEES

HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE:

In the winter of 1991, the Alliance shipped over eight tons of food, clothing, drugs and supplies to Tula. Since then, many shipments have been organized in a family-to-family structure, where over 200 families in the Capital Region have been paired with families in Tula. Six additional shipments went directly to organizations in Tula, such as the local hospital. Transportation and customs arrangements have been a continuing problem in these efforts, but the results speak for themselves - thousands of needy people in Tula have been assisted by the Alliance's efforts, and many scarce items have been collected and delivered to assist in raising the living and healthcare standards in Tula.

Early in the relationship, communications with Tula were extremely difficult. Mail delivery and telephone connections were highly erratic. Courier and mutual contacts in each country were the only reliable methods.

The Alliance became one of the first to utilize an early form of electronic mail to maintain contact with people in Tula, well before the Internet became a reality. One of the purposes of the first trip by Capital Region citizens to Tula was to establish electronic links from the Albany BOCES office to Finland, thence to a contact in Moscow, through a new division of the Russian telephone company, and on to our Alliance contacts in Tula. Although today e-mail communication with Tula is routine, in 1991 this was a major breakthrough in international electronic communication for the Alliance.

AGRICULTURE STRATEGY:

Agriculture Committee: To assist in the development of efficient and productive farms. To provide a series of seminars on topics such as soil science, hog raising, organic farming, milk producing, etc. to farmers in the Tula and Moscow regions.

Groups of farmers from the Capital Region have gone to Tula to demonstrate American farming techniques. The farmers have provided hybrid seeds to improve crop yields. Several groups of farmers from the Tula Region have also visited farms in the Capital Region. In 1995, a group of Capital Region farmers took a group of Tula farmers to Minnesota to study high-intensity and high-volume farming technologies.