REI’s Central Asia Regional Leader, Ron Wiley, PhD, took some time to answer our questions about the strategy behind bringing in short-term professional teams. Ron describes his vision for how these professionals will help provide the resources Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have asked REI for.
What kind of short-term professional team are you hosting? Who is on the team?
The Fall Short-Term Business Team has come together after four years of planning, interrupted by first the pandemic and then other issues. The team is primarily made up of long-time friends whom we’ve invited to come and make a short-term contribution to our REI’s work in Kazakhstan, both in Oskemen and Almaty.
Captain Scott Cary is an Alaska Airlines pilot who teaches leadership and life principles through an aviator’s lens. Cliff Westbrook is a Senior Manager of Process Improvement, a SixSigma Black Belt, and a former Air Force pilot with past work experience in the former Soviet Union. Kathryn Cleveland is a college friend of Jeanine’s with whom we walked the Camino de Santiago several years ago, but also a widowed spouse of a Marine officer with years of international living experience, as well as experience as a writer and educator and retreat facilitator. Steve Estes is an IT professional and entrepreneur with extensive experience in software development leadership, agile transformation, data analytics and technology innovation.
The team is being led by Tim Moore, REI’s Director of Short-Term Professional Teams and Exchange Fellowships, who himself has 15 years of experience as a business leader in Kazakhstan, besides his current and other previous roles.
What are the dates for the teams visit?
The team will be assembling in Kazakhstan’s southern capital, Almaty, in the early days of October, before jetting on October 6th to Oskemen (aka Ust’-Kamenogorsk), the regional capital of East Kazakhstan, in the far northeastern corner of the country.
On October 11th, they will return for the weekend back in Almaty, before part of the team returns to the U.S., and Kathryn, Scott and Cliff proceed with us to Tashkent and Samarkand (where REI has a resident team working at a university), Uzbekistan for a few days.
What are the teams' key objectives?
Serve REI partner Kazakh-American Free University (KAFU) in Oskemen by sharing from team members’ expertise with students and university staff in classroom and informal settings.
Serve REI partner ENACTUS Kazakhstan in Almaty by sharing from team members’ expertise with students in classroom and informal settings.
Serve REI partner Samarkand International University of Technology (SIUT) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan by sharing from team members’ expertise with students and university staff in classroom and informal settings.
Provide holistic input and encouragement to the REI teams in both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as they share their life stories spiritual depth with us all.
Enhance REI partner relationships in both countries, and stimulate exploration of future visits by other REI professional volunteers.
How will the teams visits impact the overall REI work in your city/country?
Although we have hosted individual professional volunteers to good effect and lasting impact at several times over the past five years since REI re-entered Central Asia, this initial team of professional volunteers will model the high impact that REI short-term professional teams can have, as a door-opener for regular visits by REI volunteer teams in the future.
REI’s resident staff are deeply appreciated by our partners in Central Asia for their influence and contribution to the development of their emerging nations, but this demonstration of REI’s ability to deliver a broader range of professional expertise can spawn more and greater opportunities for the introduction of additional long-term resident staff.
Why do you think these short-term team visits are important?
REI in Central Asia is being asked for a steady stream of visiting faculty to come to KAFU, for example. They are also asking us to place long-term resident faculty at the university, similar to what REI has done at SIUT over the past two years. We’re also getting requests to enter into partnerships with other universities and institutions, but we lack the personnel capacity to answer every request.
Such short-term teams not only allow REI to deliver effective responses to these requests but expose an ever-expanding cadre of professional volunteers to the opportunities to make lasting impact at universities and other institutions in Central Asia.
Once exposed to the beautiful people and cultures of this region, we trust that several—perhaps many—will be drawn and sense a call to make longer-term contributions, whether as REI resident staff or as volunteers who make annual or even more frequent visits to help “build people to build nations” in Central Asia.
Anything else you want to say about the teams coming?
We’re hoping to see the work of REI expand throughout the five Central Asian countries and beyond in the coming years, and to do this, we’ll need to implement a two-pronged strategy of placing long-term resident staff teams with our various partner institutions and support the long-term work with the stimulation of vision and impact from short-term professional volunteer teams.
Whether long or short-term, REI professional staff make a lasting impact through the relationships they develop and their investment in those relationships. Our hearts are filled with love for the peoples of Central Asia, and we invite many more to join us in loving them well as REI professional volunteers.
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