The project was started by the wish to help the people in Russia and especially in Lisky in the hard times of the 1990's. However, the projects main tasks have changed to different topics:
Establishing contacts and friendships between german and russian people.
We found out that it is very important to get people from both countries into contact as much as possible. They should get to know each others cultures better and also be able to learn from each other. Besides we tried to give the people from administration and the still new economy in russia a chance to get to know the german system and to learn methods which are very new for Russia. The capitalism changes the country very rapidly, so as many people as possible should get the chance to participate.

In order to build a friendly relationship between the two countries, it is very important for the generation of the 2nd world war, the "cold" war and especially the young people to get in contact with each other. We have really wonderful experiances from this meetings and we never heared any bad words from any side. On the contrary, the meetings are always very friendly and warm hearted. Each side was very impressed from the other.

The change of our project from aid to exchange also had another reason:
There is still aid needed and welcome in russia - but nowadays the buerocratic borders are nearly impossible to take for us as private persons. Also the sometimes terrible situations at the borders and the very difficult security-situation makes it nearly impossible to send more aid transports over the long way of about 3000km trough poland, byelarus and russia.

Because of that our further activities have changed to establish contacts of any kind between Lisky and Neukirchen. Our main task here is the organisation and the sponsoring of the trip. The financing of the passport alone is getting at the limit of our russian guests.

We find out that it is very difficult to get the neccessary documents to travel to germany in an appropriate time. To get a german visa our russian partner has to travel to moscow. The journey takes 15 hours by train one way! It can take several weeks from the handing in of the papers to the date for the application. Before the last visit only the negociation of our member of parliament made it possible to get the visa within one day (as it actually should be)

Gertrud Frock, translation Christian Frock