Dear All: Here is my report on the recent trip to Moscow. As usual, the best news comes at the end, as a reward for your patience. These are some of the highlights, as there were many more meetings and discussions that we hope will lead one day to getting new supporters. My trip had three main goals. 1. Open the office of our Foundation in Moscow 2. Search for high level government support of the project 3. Raise funds On the way to Moscow I stopped in Seattle at the invitation of John Schmidt, Director, Cooperative Programs and Business Development Russia/CIS for the Boeing Corporation. He set a series of meetings for me there. They included Foundation for Russian-American Economic Cooperation (Program Manager Robbyn Kistler), World Association for Children and Parents (Director for Child Assistance Angela Christensen) and Attorney At Law William T.Robinson. During that sunny day in Seattle (!) I finally met Mitchell Mann, Senior Marketing Analyst of the Commercial Airplanes Group at the Boeing Corporation. He was the person who did due diligence to our Foundation last July and gave us his positive verdict. I am happy to report that Mitch agreed to join our International Advisory Board!!!!! This gives me true peace of mind to say nothing of our future donors! Mitch is a wonderful addition to our Board! My sincere thanks to John for sparing a whole day from his busy schedule to accompany me to all the meetings. I really felt that we have got a true friend in Boeing! 1. Office in Moscow. As you may remember the decision to open the office was taken last September and with your help I was able to prepare the main necessary documents to start the long and painful process. Our representative there, the young, bright and charming Natasha Tavdumadze, did most of the job making sure we are on the right track. Finally 13 documents have been gathered, translated, notarized and submitted to the legal agency "Bazalt" that will take care of putting us through all the necessary hurdles of the process. We hope by the end of December to open the office in Moscow and a bank account in Vnesheconombank. 2. Government Support The Blue prints of the future Rehabilitation Center for Children with Cancer and Blood Diseases in Vladivostok have been done and we paid for putting them together (30 people from Petersstroi worked for 4 months, it cost us $113,000 i.e. 7% of the total Center construction cost of $1.5 mln). The time came to present them to the Government offices and seek their support. At the wise suggestion of our International Board Member Leonid Slutski and another Board member Alexander Rumyantsev, Natasha and I paid the following visits. a. Federal Assembly (equivalent ofthe US Senate) a1. Senator V.Medvedeva - Chair, Commission on International Technical and Humanitarian Cooperation. a2. Senator V.Sudarenkov - Vice-President, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe a3. Senator V.Shudegov - Chairman, Committee for Science, Culture, Education, Public Health and Ecology We found very sincere approval of our project and were given very encouraging resolutions in written form from the senators. They promised their support when the official documents will hit the floor of the Senate in order to include the project in the Federal financing program. b. the State Duma (equivalent of Congress) b1. Congressman N.Gerasimenko - Chairman, Committee for Health Care b2. Congressman D.Rogozin - Chairman, Committee on International Affairs I am happy to report that the Duma echoed the words of the Senate. c. Ministry of Health c1. Mr.Yu.Shevchenko - Minister. He asked many precise questions and showed real interest in many details of the project. His main concern was functioning of the Center after its construction. The Minister blessd the project and expressed his wish to join our International Advisory board. We are proud of this new member! c2. Dr.S.Furgal- Director, Department of International Cooperation at the Ministry was also present at this meeting. He is now our main contact person at the Ministry. d. Ministry of Foreign Affairs d1. Mr. A.Fedotov - Deputy Minister, Personnel Divistion. We discussed possible ways to attract sponsors who can contribute to our project. Mr. Fedotov is always very creative and very eager to help. He strongly believes in the succes of our endeavour. d2. Mr.A.Losyukov - Deputy Minister, Asia Division . He is our main help at the Ministry in Moscow in getting sponsors from Asia-Pacific countries (Korea, Japan, New Zealand). Always very supportive, he responds to all our suggestions and ideas and actively participates in their implementation. d3. Igor Ivanov - Minister of Foreign Affairs (equivalent of the Secretary of State) signed a letter adressed to me expressing his sincere support of the Foundation efforts to build the Center in Vladivostok by uniting all the people of good will. This is a great honor for our Foundation that a man of his statue follows the development of our project and expresses his support for its implementation. d4. Mr.A.Ivanov - Director, Bureau of Asia-Pacific Regional Issues. We recieved great support from Alexander Ivanov, lots of good ideas how to find sponsors among his Board members and strong desire to do the project together. 3. Raise funds. a. American Chamber of Commerce a1. Mr.A.B.Somers - President. This meeting was kindly organized by the Vice President of Boeing S.Kravchenko. Andrew Somers impressed me as a very warm and caring person, wise and friendly. He immediately took an interest in our project and agreed to help set an office call with the U.S. Ambassador A.Vershbow that indeed took place next week. Mr.Somers accompanied me to the meeting and gave a very vafourable introduction to our Foundation and the Center in Vladivostok. We hope that the office call with the Ambassador will bring us new friends who will be willing to assist us. My very special thanks to Andrew Somers for being so generous with his time and for his sincerety and willingness to help. We hope for a long friendship with him. a2. Mrs. S.Ovanesova - Legislative Advisor. Indeed Svetlana gave us many excellent suggestions and she also invited us to a monthly get together of the members of the Chamber at the Marriott Hotel and introduced us to some of them during that evening. b. Vnesheconombank We had a meeting with the Head of the Protocol Department Mr.K.Kuplyakov. Before that Mr.N.Kosov, the Deputy Chairman of the Board confirmed the intent of the bank to donate $200,000 in his telephone conversation with Mr.Yu.Popov, our Board member from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Later the secretary of Mr.N.Kosov gave us the name of the contact person who will be working with Natasha Tavdumadze to set the necessary arangements for opening the bank account in their bank where the donation will be transfered. c. Embassy of the Republic of Korea We had a very good meeting with Ambassador Chung Tae-ik who is one of our most devoted friends in Moscow. He made quite a few introductions to Korean companies for us in Moscow. Our first office call with the Ambassador was made possible last August thanks to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs A.Losyukov. Ambassador Chung is a very interesting person, lively and undertaking. He promised me to do anything he could to make our project a success. The world will be a happier place if only there will be more people like Ambassador Chung. d. Samsung Electronics Mr.Don-Joo Lee - Director General. He was very aware of the project as he had already recieved a letter about it from the Russian Ambassador in Seoul T.Ramishvili, who is our great supporter and my letters to the Headquarters of the corporation. He also heard of the Center from the Samsung representative in Vladivostok and the Consul General of the Republic of Korea there. Mr. Don-Joo Lee promised financial support from Samsung Electronics as well as in-kind donations to the Center once it is built. The meeting was very warm and encouraging. e. Escada I wrote a letter to the President of Escada Mr.Wolfgang Ley with the description of the project and the neccessary documents explaining the details. A famous TV jounalist Oksana Pushkina who is a Good Will Ambassador of Escada in Russia kindly agreed to pass the letter to the President. We hope to hear from them soon. f. LG Electronics This was a very moving meeting. Mr.Byon - President of LG Electronics in Russia and CIS gave us outstanding news. The company decided to donate to Children of Russia $50,000 for the project in Vladivostok and $50,000 have been collected by the employees of the company in Korea and Russia to help the construction of the Center. This special kind of donation can not be recieved without tears of immense gratitude! We are planning a ceremony of recieving the check from the top people of LG Electronics at the Russian Embassy in Seoul. Russian Ambassador to the Republic of Korea T.Ramishvili was also moved by this gesture and offered the use of the Embassy for the ceremony. While in Moscow Natasha Tavdumadze and I had several very good working meetings with the Social Innnovations Foundation, its Vice President Artur Rean. We signed an Agreement on Cooperation as partners with the goal to work together in helping Russian children. We value this friendship and hope for many years of fruitful work together. We finalized the agreement with FBK (Finance and Banking Consultants) that was signed by both Partners of the company, Elena Proskurnya and Sergei Shapiguzov. According to the agreement FBK will be executing auditing functions to make sure the donated funds were used as intended. We are very grateful to the staff of the company for working hard with us to make this agreement a reality. We had meetings with our International Advisory Board members Yuri Popov, Gennadi Gerasimov, Leonid Slutsky, Alexander Rumyantsev and Eleonora Mitofanova. We were fortunate that Dr.L.Minkina from Vladivostok was in Moscow at that time, so we had a chance to brief her on the developments and also to hear her report on the situation in Vladivostok. Our friendship with the UN Information Center in Moscow continues and is getting stronger. Its Director Alexander Gorelik is a very engaging person with interesting ideas, initiative and good heart. We spent quite a bit of time putting together a new bilingual brochure of Children of Russia. Great help has been provided to us by Gennadi Gerasimov and my artist friend there Slava Davidov. We are confident this is going to be a very nice and professional new brochure. Fashion designer Natasha Drigant opened her own Fashion house in Moscow and impressed us with quite a talent in haute couture. She is still working on the next summer collection based on the lively drawings on the children from Vladivostok. Our new incoming Vice-President Steen Winther suggested that while in Moscow I meet with his brother Henrick, who is the manager of several chains of affordable restaurants (like Friday's) in Moscow. Natasha and I met Henrick and his lovely wife Julia and were pleasantly surprised how perfect his russian was. He is quite an accomplished and serious businessman (a member of the American Chamber of Commerce Board), loves Russia and its people, very creative in his undertakings and both of them have big hearts. We hope this first meeting is the beginning of a long friendship with many encounters to come. Thank you, Steen! One of the greatest artists and sculpturors of Russia Zurab Tsereteli agreed to donate one of his angel sculptures for our Center. It will be installed after the completion of the Center in front of the Parents Home, our children will get their own Guardian Angel. We had a very interesting encounter with the Miss Russia Enterprise, its President N.Kostin and its Vice President Marina. They offered Miss Russia Svetlana Koroleva to be the face and promoter of our Foundation in general and of the project in Vladivostok in particular. We still have to figure out how we can go about it, but it was a very generous and sincere offer. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. This ends my long report and I hope it will provoke new initiatives from all of you that will bring us a series of new donations to ensure the successful construction of our Center. Aloha, natasha