The FINANCIAL — Interview with Constantine-Sidamon-Eristoff, founder and chairman of American Friends of Georgia
Born in the US; mother being American. Father emigrating from Georgia to US, in 1921, after the collapse of Georgian republic. First came back to Georgia with family in 1988 during which Georgia was still part of Soviet Union.
"It was in 1994 when Shevardnadze (ex-president of Georgia) just arrived from Moscow, the country was in a difficult post-Soviet transitional period and a group of us said we should sit and do something for Georgia. We met in Washington, There was Lado Babishvili and another man called Dale Medearis from the Environment Protection Agency in the US. Also Robert W. Medearis who worked in Georgia over the years and Stephen Strickland, who had a small foundation. Dario Margvelishvili, myself, my son Simon Eristoff – we were incorporators.
In 1995 we organised American Friends of Georgia, first board included myself and my son Simon. Dario Margvelishvili, Lado Babishvili. Othar Shalikashvili joined then and we started to raise money. And then we needed an executive director, hence Marusya Chavchavadze who’d been working with New York City government and was anxious to leave that. We thought she’d be a very good executive which she was.
At that time there were not that many people who’d think about Georgia at all. We raised money by sending letters to anybody we knew. So we’ve been going on ever since. Over the years we’ve expended several million dollars of work".
Q. What about the first steps taken in Georgia once coming here?
A. When Marusya went over to Georgia she traveled with an old friend from Paris, Nano Kvinitadze D’Abo, and they met with Abbess Mariam after several days being there. Marusya also visited the Children’s TB Hospital in Tbilisi. Thereafter we started working with tuberculosis (TB) in addition with young poor and street children. It was a World Health Organization project which said 4000 Georgians suffered from TB hence we raised money for them.
Money for TB prevention was used for training of staff, purchasing technical equipment and for providing free treatment and medicines. When I went to Georgia on a business trip in 1996-97 I met other people there including our board members.
Raising money in the US was with anybody we knew, particularly Georgians at the starting point. Under US rules you should know where money goes to so we were very lucky – we’d had good partners in Georgia.
Q. When was the first support made to Georgia and in what amount?
A. Our first grants were made in 1995 and the total was $17,150. ($15,000 for Tuberculosis Project in Kakhetia, $1,750 to send 20 tons of Gerber baby food and $400 to send 1200 books in English to Tbilisi School Number One.) The amount of support varied from year to year depending upon our success in fundraising in the United States. For instance, in 2007 we gave out direct grants totaling $162,359. Total amount given from 1994-2010 was approximately $5,901,562 ($1,511,689 Direct grants in dollars, $4,389,873 in Kind donations.) This was both dollar grants to NGOs and gifts in kind of equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals which were sent directly to hospitals in Georgia. We typically sent dollar grants to NGOs who are providing support to vulnerable Georgians such as street, disabled, abandoned and IDP children, children with TB, cancer and leukemia, homeless single mother, IDP adults and ill and homeless elderly.
We also tried to support in a small way Georgian artists efforts to promote their art and culture.
(Note: The 2010 Grants List includes $121,900 direct dollar grants and $2.4 million in kind grants which was the value of the Gardasil vaccination program we were introducing to Georgia to prevent cervical cancer in Georgian girls.)
Q. How do grants get allocated in Georgia?
A. On the basis of our evaluation of the reliability and trust worthiness of the NGOs who are serving the most vulnerable Georgian population. Marusya wires grants to our Georgian partners or the executive director of our Georgian Office, Lena Kiladze, distributes the grants that I have wired to our account in Georgia or which have been raised in Georgia.
Q. How does the organization function and what is its structure?
A. Under Delaware law we have members elect directors and directors elect the officers. The members and directors in this case are the same people as we don’t have a huge number of members. We have 20 directors and we have the same number of class A members, but we have to meet them separately so that members meet to elect the directors and directors meet to elect the officers. It’s kind of crazy but it’s how it works under our law.
Then we have an advisory board and we have a Georgian advisory board as well as a Georgian office. The latter office is run by Lena Kiladze. We’re also the members of AmCham. The US Embassy has always been very helpful in our endeavors. Members of AFGeorgia are very conservative and we know where every dollar goes.
Q. Did you help children other than TB and do you provide other type of assistance, else of money?
A. We also helped street children and actually some of those street children are now in college and we are helping them through that. In addition, in Isani military hospital, we opened a kindergarten with 54 children traumatized by war events in 2008. We also helped IDPs quite a bit with vocational training. For now the government has shut down the kindergarten so now we’re trying to find 20 such children a substitute; and it continues over and over again.
We always try to match what we have. Sometimes there are particular projects to which we help with facilities. We try to do the piece that larger organizations cannot do. For instance, we bought a school building in Telavi for NGO New Life which is the only school for disabled children in Eastern Georgia. We also bought a building for NGO Biliki in Gori that cares for street, poor and IDP children and Save the Children renovated this building.
We have also our charter where we say that we want to help arts so in the future when the social problems get better we’ll be moving in this direction too.
Q. How does raising money work out in US?
A. There are two or three ways; you rely on people you know or have met and then telling them via mail, phone to say – please help. We do it also by outreach means, from our web-site with donation bar. But mostly these are the personal contacts through which you get the money from.
So Americans were very supportive, in addition my family was very generous. In the US if you give money to listed charitable organizations then you get a tax benefit and it’s very important for fundraising here.
First money all came out of our board and my family. In Georgia we partner with all sorts of organizations and try to help them do things too. For example Project Hope was very helpful, the State Department paid for transportation and Project Hope supplied all the boatloads of medical equipment, supplies and medicines. AFGeorgia received and distributed these items to five of our medical projects caring for children sick with TB, cancer and leukemia as well as the seriously and terminally ill elderly. These included the Children’s Republican Hospital, the Children’s TB Hospital, the National Cancer Center, the Mercy Center Hospice and Georgia’s National Screening Center.
We also get various types of letters from Georgians who are even in the US, for medical problems although we don’t have right under our law to support them. The Georgian Association headed by Mamuka Tsereteli is in charge of that but in most of the cases they don’t have enough money to that.
There were several occasions when we sent some people for cure in the US. Especially when there were leukemia diseased children we’d to send them in Germany.
Q. What about your relationship with President Saakashvili?
A. In 1994-95 I’d also met with Mikheil Saakashvili when he worked in our law firm. At that time I was counsel and met him when he was a Muskie fellow at Columbia University. Then we arranged to have Patterson Belknap, the law firm I worked in hire him as an intern and I found money from a foundation to give support to him and for his living expenses.
So when he started he (Saakashvili) ended up in the Tbilisi City Council; my younger son also ended up in the City Council of New York. They maintained this friendship all along.
Q. What was happening in crisis situation like it was during rose revolution and war of August 2008?
A. During Rose Revolution, we continued our work. Since I knew Saakashvili – my wife and I were also invited to the inaugural ceremony. At that time we visited our different projects. The First lady is also always very helpful supporting us in our efforts.
Over the years, the organization was growing sometimes up and sometimes down. In 2008 though, there was a great outpouring of support from the US. So war actually made a lot of Americans aware of needs in Georgia and it was relatively easy at that time to raise money. Actually it’s not a problem to spend the money but it’s a real problem to earn it. After the Russian war, Georgia had a real economic shock although now it’s improving gradually, I think.
Q. How do you think of Georgian political, social, business environment?
A. I don’t comment on political questions at all but generally Georgia has tremendous opportunity in tourism area since it’s a beautiful country. I’ve recently seen a brochure in the travel section of the New York Times.
When we think of the history of Georgia, it always had two balanced competing interests, Turkish, Persian, Russian invasions. The people of Georgia are all very bright and energetic. Tbilisi and it’s center are the regional economic center, but in my opinion what we’ve got to do is to foster other areas of Georgia economically too. Also agriculture of Georgia and pipeline situation is very useful.
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