Contents: |
||
|
|
||
MISSION
Siberian Bridges, Inc., a charitable, non-profit organization, acts to assure contact and cooperation between the people of Zabaikalye, Russia, and the people of the upper Midwest United States.
PRINCIPLES
We are all brothers and sisters by virtue of our humanity. Mutual understanding breeds tolerance; tolerance breeds peace. Increasing contact can lead to increased understanding and tolerance, to being good neighbors and therefore, to greater peace in our world.
Siberian Bridges, Inc. recognizes the equal value and dignity of diverse cultures or our world and in no way intends to promote one culture or value system as superior to any other. Siberian Bridges and its representatives abroad will represent the United States in an honorable and responsible way. |
||
|
|
||
HISTORY The seeds of Siberian Bridges were sown during a concert planning trip made by pianist Thomas Dickinson in 1988. His contacts took him to northeast China, an area that had received few Western artists. One’s first glimpse of China is always eye-opening, but it was made all the more remarkable for Dickinson when he found himself sharing a train compartment with six Russians from the Siberian city of Chita. When they learned why Dickinson was there they encouraged him to come to their city, the closest Soviet city to Beijing on the Beijing-Moscow train route. This chance encounter reflected the enormous changes taking place in the world. As a military center and repository for nuclear missiles aimed at the US and China, Chita had been closed to the outside world since shortly after the 1917 revolution. Its borders were opened - the missiles having been dismantled - only five months before the meeting on the train in 1988. The men, representing various state enterprises, proudly showed their new international passports. For them it was a miracle that they were actually traveling in China (only a few years before China and the USSR had been edging toward war) and then that they should meet an American! The meeting was momentous for Dickinson as well. He never imagined that one day he would perform in the two great socialist countries of the world - countries he had been taught as a child to hate and fear - not only in major cities, but in remote areas rarely visited by Americans. Thus, Dickinson’s relationship with the city of Chita began. A 1989 tour was followed by another in 1991 to China and the Soviet Union (Chita, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Angarsk, Ulan Ude). In 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he returned to Chita a third time to teach music and English, becoming the first foreign teacher at the Music College and the first native speaker ever to teach English in Chita. It was on this third visit that Dickinson recognized a serious need for neighborly contact between the West and these remote parts of China and Russia. This was intensified by how warmly, almost desperately, his teaching was welcomed in Chita, inspiring him to form Musical Bridge, now Siberian Bridges in 1993.
From 1995 to 2005, Siberian Bridges sent high school and college level teachers of English to Chita. One of those teachers taught for two school years and another taught for three years in a small village school. Since January 2009. SB-US and the newly formed SB-Russia have collaborated on a broad array of projects. Siberian Bridges believes in civil society and intercultural cooperation. Recognizing the power of person-to-person contact, we emphasize educational, cultural, informational, and social initiatives. We do this by promoting collaboration between American and Siberian institutions, non-government organization and cultural groups, providing teachers and materials and coordinating a variety of exchanges and other educational training programs. |
||
|
|
||
ACHIEVEMENTS
|
||
|
The Teacher Fellowship Program: From 1993 through 2005, SB worked with educational and community-based organizations in southeastern Siberia and beyond to facilitate educational exchange and foster international cultural awareness. In 1995 SB sent the first native speaker of English to teach in Chita universities. Our Teacher Fellowship program provided universities and high schools with teachers of English Language, Literature, Music, Business, Constitutional Law and American Studies. Click here to meet our Teacher Fellow Alumni’s. The Americans who participated in the Teacher Fellowship program did far more than teach classes in their areas of expertise; by living and working alongside native Russians in their own communities they helped raise global awareness in a remote part of the world with limited contact with the West. Learn more… Service Tourism: We planned and mounted two tours to eastern Siberia. The first was for a group of college educators from Michigan to visit and consult with their Russian colleagues. The trip included a visit to Lake Baikal. The second was for a family of four. The teen-aged children spent time at two summer camps with the kids there. Their parents, one an investment banker, the other an entrepreneur, lectured on business and consulted with local business people in Chita. |
 
|
|
 |
Chita Educational Consortium: We formed the first "Consortium" of educational institutions in Chita. We also facilitated the first "Sister School" relationship between a Chita and US based university which has brought local professors of English as a Second Language to an English-speaking country for the first time. | |
|
Educational Supplies: Working both independently and in tandem with the Sabre Foundation we shipped thousands of books, computers and other educational materials to libraries and schools throughout the Chita Province. Our contributions to the Pushkin Library, Zabaikalsky Krai's main library located in Chita are the largest contribution to the library in its over 100 year history. |
|
|
|
|
Grant Assistance: SB provided limited grant assistance to Chita-based NGOs. We helped support the Great Source traditional music festival in Chita province (featured above) sponsored by the Zabaikalsky Center for Social Development. Other activities included funding an Internet node and providing NGOs with computers and grant writing assistance. |
|
|
Cultural Programming: SB supported cultural programs in Zabaikalsky Krai which promoted Russian and indigenous folk art and music. Grant funding was provided to the Zabaikalsky Center for Social Development in support of yearly festivals of traditional ethnic dance and music. These events also provided a means for cultural exchange between Zabaikalsky Krai and other provinces throughout Siberia. |
 |
|
|
|
||
