Update on the Peace Corps in Ukraine: an interview with volunteer Mark Raczkiewycz (10/09/05)

Update on the Peace Corps in Ukraine: an interview with volunteer Mark Raczkiewycz

by Oksana Piaseckyj
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

MIAMI - At a recent meeting in Miami, Karl Beck, director of the Peace Corps in Ukraine noted that the spirit and ideals of the Peace Corps are thriving and significantly improving conditions throughout Ukraine. Mr. Beck credits this success to the imaginative, energetic leadership of the corps' volunteers such as Mark Raczkiewycz, a young man with a bachelor's degreee in business administration.

According to Mr. Beck, people like Mr. Raczkiewycz "sense the changes that are occurring here, and it is exciting for them to be delivering to Ukrainians useful skills in management and language that will help them succeed in a capitalistic economy and democratic political system."

Mr. Beck invariably asks whether there are more people like Mr. Raczkiewycz in our communities who would like to share their talents in the Ukrainian Peace Corps. This writer suggested that perhaps an interview with Mr. Raczkiewycz for The Ukrainian Weekly could spark some interest. Mr. Raczkiewycz enthusiastically agreed.

Q: Mark, you were assigned to a Business Center in Ivano-Frankivsk in 2002. Tell us about the center and the scope of your work.

A: Before I begin explaining what I did in Ukraine, I'd like to provide you with general background information on how PC [the Peace Corps] operates in the country. Presently it has three programs, all of which are registered with a respective ministry within the government. The first one is for business educators (volunteers who teach business curriculum at colleges/universities). The second one is for NGO developers (those who work for any non-profit, albeit non-political organizations to increase their capacities and sustainability levels), and the third one is for ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers and youth development volunteers, who teach English at secondary schools along with civic duty, leadership, basic business and computer skills.

Recently, PC/Ukraine changed its focus from mostly urban centers to more rural areas in order to bridge the "development gap" of rural youth with their urban counterparts. We were able to accomplish this because of the 300 PC volunteers in Ukraine - the largest PC presence in the world.

I worked in Ivano-Frankivsk for a non-profit Women's Business Support Center, which was mainly funded by Winrock International, a D.C.-based NGO that supports women in the area that was the former Russian empire. Winrock's project in Ukraine was called the "Women's Economic Empowerment" project. It started two types of NGOs throughout Ukraine. One is for women's business support centers and the other is for women trafficking prevention centers.

When I started work there in 2002, it was wholly reliant upon grant money for its financial survival and I was charged with the task of improving its "capacity areas" and its "core activities" with the goal of making it more economically sustainable and less reliant on grants. The center devised and provided business trainings on ways to start a business, customer service, time management, psychological immunity and leadership in business and capacity development. These courses were developed to encompass short- and long-term training periods. Additionally, there were information consulting services, called an "entrepreneurial hotline." These hotlines were manned by two operators answering questions from aspiring and current entrepreneurs on everything related to business activities. Today it is a business infrastructure development organization.

My task was to develop the center's internal capabilities. I started a website, trained the center's employees in areas of fund-raising, grant and proposal writing, dealing with clients, writing an employee handbook, etc. I also developed training programs for clients targeting small and medium-sized enterprise business owners (SMEs). This consisted mainly in ways to improve their business knowledge and marketing skills.

Q: Were your training sessions limited to Ivano-Frankivsk?

A: At the invitation of other Peace Corps volunteers, I gave trainings in other business centers such as in Crimea and in Dnipropetrovsk. With the development of a monthly newsletter, we were reaching the general public on our progress and giving informative guidance about our activities and disseminating general information about how small businesses operate.

Q: What results did you witness from your training for SMEs?

A: The work that I did was more like planting seeds. Our 10-week "How to Start Your Own Business" course had a 30 percent success rate in terms of starting a business. About 12 percent of those who had taken the course found employment with the skills and knowledge they acquired, and another 7 percent created new jobs at their existing places of business.

Occasionally we had business owners take the course just to gain new skills. One very dedicated rural lady came all the way from her village of Komarivka in the Ternopil Oblast to Ivano-Frankivsk three times a week for three hours per day of class study. The distance was roughly 50-60 kilometers, which is quite a long distance for a middle-aged woman, on old buses and on not-too-friendly roads and driving conditions.

The circumstances of her life were quintessential in the sense that she was at a point where she would've had to either leave Ukraine in search of employment overseas or stay and live off her current business endeavor. The ad caught her attention, since she baked breads and wedding cakes in her village on the side, and saw a niche: that all breads sold in the village were delivered from surrounding cities.

She always had a business idea of starting her own bakery - mostly breads - in an old-fashioned brick oven. She already had relatives living and working in Italy, who were prepared to send her the ovens and other necessary equipment. She just needed some basic business knowledge, like how to register a business and what type of business structure to use, such as limited partnership, sole proprietorship, etc., marketing skills, basic accounting and access to credit or investment to raise the money for the shipment and purchase of the equipment.

This lady was always the first one in and last one to leave each class; asked the most questions, and even came in on the optional, consulting, planning day to get the inside scoop. In the end, she defended the best business plan in front of our panel. She now runs a small successful bakery in the village of Komarivka.

Q: What are the typical problems facing entrepreneurs?

A: Entrepreneurs face several general problems, such as access to credit. The interest rate for first-time borrowers could be up to 40 percent in the local currency and 20 percent if borrowing in American dollars. How to find and manage information relating to business is another. They often mismanage the barrage of information available and can easily become overwhelmed by it. They do not know the basic knowledge on how markets work, like supply and demand and how certain laws affect their business.

The concepts of researching a segment of your market and customer service management need to be learned. They need to understand that a customer is your "bread and butter" and not someone you serve and get out of your store ASAP. This lack of marketing knowledge is evident even in major cities.

Q: Can you relate an example of an interesting entrepreneurial success story?

A: One particular success comes to mind - an owner of a translation bureau. He was a former neurologist who rented a small, one-room office on the first floor of a residential building. The majority of his clients were Ukrainians needing documents translated into English, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian - all of the countries where illegal and sometimes-legal Ukrainian workers reside. In other words, his client base consisted of people obtaining work permits and visas abroad in Western Europe. They needed diplomas, marriage certificates, and driver's licenses translated.

Naturally the doctor wanted to expand his services. Occasionally a student would need something translated for school as well. I asked him whether he'd researched the translation market in Ukraine, on how "full-service" he wanted to go, whether that was necessary at this point in the Ivano-Frankivsk translation market?

His answer was a flat no.

I suggested he coordinate and share information with other businesses working in similar fields. I advised him to solicit the marriage agencies and the three hotels in town where most foreigners come to offer "oral interpretation" services for those "wife hunting" foreigners, regular tourists and the tourists searching for fun. He didn't know how much he could charge for an hourly rate of interpretation. So I helped him research it by contacting several Kyiv firms and then lowering the rate by 15 percent to make the adjustment for a less-in-demand western Ukrainian town like Ivano-Frankivsk.

We developed a marketing plan, which included an annual marketing blitz during the "green card" lottery season, by offering consulting, help and online application for the lottery to all applicants. We advertised in the local press, hung up a stand on the sidewalk to attract more "pedestrian traffic," and pasted large green colored letters on his store-front window displaying only "Green Card" with an American flag standing on the window sill. Business boomed. He bought additional office space from the adjacent first-floor occupant, knocked down the wall and expanded, bought more computers and hired more translators/interpreters.

I've seen him prosper from having one computer and one telephone line to having three computers, additional hired help, a larger share of the market and a stellar reputation.

Q: Your job involved some secondary projects. What were they?

A: I taught business English and terminology at our "Youth Business School"; organized a study tour for Belarusian women NGO leaders to visit our center and speak with local community and government leaders; volunteered on an annual river clean up of the Bystrytsia River; and helped a local psychologist tour neighboring schools to speak about the dangers of women trafficking.

Q: What was the focus of the study tour for the Belarusian women?

A: This study tour was financed by the Ukrainian Women's Fund through a small grant that I wrote. Its main endeavor was to invite a group of women NGO leaders from Belarus along with their government "gender equity" counterparts to basically have a look and see how things are done in Ukraine, how we lobby and cooperate with the local government, how we target the women population in our activities; what kind of activities we hold, how we monitor our progress, how we work and function. Their trip lasted, I think, seven to 10 days

Q: Who initiated the women trafficking project and how was it implemented?

A: This project was through La Strada via the French Embassy in Kyiv. It was funded by a small grant. They gave us pamphlets on women's trafficking in Ukrainian to distribute and disseminate, posters to hang up around the city, and funds to travel around the oblast and talk to so-called high school seniors, but boys were included.

This group was targeted since many girls who complete secondary school study and whose parents can't afford to send them to any institution of higher learning are most at-risk for being targeted for illegal trafficking or falling victim to a scam.

We spoke about common sense type of things to avoid, such as, never to surrender your passport and seriously consider everything involved with working abroad. We issued them a list of Ukrainian embassies in every Western European country and what kind of questions to ask. We were just trying to inform them of what to expect, on how their desperation in combination with their naivete could endanger them.

Q: Just to round out your numerous and diverse experiences, please tell us about your cleaning project of the Bystrytsia River.

A: The day after Ukrainian Easter, a group of Christian youth, boy scouts, and political and student organizations gathered by the river with a huge dump truck. Once there, areas of the riverbank were designated to teams, bags and gloves were handed out, and we would collect garbage all day. Water was also provided. We had a lot of fun. The spring sun and friendly banter among us gave us a lot of entertainment.

* * *

Mark Raczkiewycz's footprints in Ukraine are by no means small. In addition, he has published a book, "10 Steps to Starting a Successful Business" (a guide he hopes will help the budding entrepreneur), organized a sister city search for Ivano-Frankivsk with a city in the United States, and put together a database of normative acts regarding business activity that were formulated by the Ivano-Frankivsk municipal government.

Readers who would like to join people like Mr. Raczkiewycz and share there knowledge with Ukrainians to help them enter into a new entrepreneurial democratic future, may contact the Peace Corps headquarters in the United States: telephone, (800) 424-8580; e-mail, https://peacecorps.gov; or the Peace Corps in Ukraine: telephone, 011-380-247-6840; e-mail, info@ua.peacecorps.gov. Information is available also on the website, www.pcukraine.org.

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