The Democracy Rule Of Law Project

The status of the Third Sector known in the developing world as Non Governmental Organizations (NGO's) or here in the States as Private Voluntary Organizations (PVO's) was terribly lacking.

In the times of Communism, everything was run by the State. Now that Communism had collapsed, most new NGO's were actually previous State run and funded offices, and were primarily staffed by the same inefficient and incompetent people who were running them as government employees.

These "new" NGO's at least had offices and assumed furniture and equipment from their previous offices. New NGO's starting at the grass roots street level, had almost nothing, aside from a real genuine desire to do good and make a change.

With special grants from the United States Agency for International Development, (USAID), originally from World Learning in 1992-1996, and then from ARD/Chechi in 1996, GJARN received close to $700,000 in special Democracy and Rule of Law grants towards the training of local NGO's in issues that affect democracy, such as Management, Budgeting, Advocacy, Leadership, Taxation and Finance, Grant Writing, Lobbying, Public Relations and so much more.

From 1992 -1995, GJARN trained more than 700 local NGO's in Ukraine. In 1995, GJARN received an additional grant to open two NGO Service Centers in Kharkiv and in Dnepropetorvsk, Ukraine, in an effort to bring more organizations to work together and to give them the tools they need as so many of them were true grass roots efforts with almost no funding.

An additional grant from the local Kharkiv branch of the Soros Foundation provided 10,000 in new computer and copier equipment.

Despite closing these office in late 1997, the efforts of the alliances and Associations forged amongst local previously competing NGO's, continues to bring positive results for their constituents.

An internal audit by World Learning of its 67 sub grantees, placed GJARN amongst the top three in terms of impact, accountability, transparency and value.

GJARN also received numerous awards from host local and national governments in Ukraine in recognition of these efforts.