The Top 100 NGOs 2013. - Akshaya Patra

a Fisherman ProuDly
DisPlays his wares aT
a cenTral FooD markeT
in minsk.
FeaTure FeaTure
The gloBal Journal + January & FeBruary 2013
The auThor enJoying
local hosPiTaliTy in
The village oF saBali,
homeTown oF yuri chizh.
Aleksandr Lukashenko is resilient. The President of Belarus has stood firm against the
European Union (EU) and its renewed political and economic sanctions in response to
his increasingly autocratic rule. In six months, he has freed two political prisoners while
a dozen remain in custody. On September 23, nationwide parliamentary elections ran
smoothly in an atmosphere of total indifference from the great majority of the
population. Russia, for its part, supports Belarus with financial subsidies,
ready to buy out everything possible at discounted prices.
The village was still part of
the Soviet Union when Yuri
Chizh – today one of Belarus’
richest businessmen, with close links
to President Aleksandr Lukashenko
– preferred to run around in the
neighboring forest rather than attend
school. To get up to childhood mischief,
he had to carefully avoid his family’s
bright yellow home, which stood only
a few meters between the school and
the kolkhoz. At that time, it seems,
the two intersecting streets of Sabali
in Biarozovsky district, 250 kilometres
south of Minsk, were full of life. Forty
years later, while the petrified Soviet
Brezhnev era has disappeared into
history, the village has plunged into a
kind of hibernation. The school has
been dismantled, and families with
children have fled to the cities. Most of
the wooden houses lie empty – indeed,
only 70 pensioners remain.
The kolkhoz holds on unconvincingly,
with two or three old tractors
languishing in a yard. The endless
ThegloBalJournal.neT
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wet and flat countryside, dotted with
familiar birch trees, has become
noticeably sadder. The yellow house is
slightly less colorful.
Chizh had to leave for Minsk relatively
early, in order to commence studies
in electronics at the Belarusian
Polytechnical Institute. From then on,
everything moved quickly. He had a
chance to exercise his entrepreneurial
skills during perestroika, and now
heads a business empire based on the
Triple holding, which reprocesses