Still Waiting....

March 20, 2007. We recently learned that the Ministry of Education again asked for accreditation documents for all agencies to be revised and resubmitted. Because of this revision, the timeframe for reaccreditation has changed. Russian authorities are no longer held to the deadline of April 30, 2007 to reaccredit our agency. However, they have said that they will not take the entire three months that is available under current regulations to process the documents. At this point, Dr. Dubrovsky, the Russian facilitator, estimates that reaccreditation for our agency will occur sometime before May.

Right now the reaccreditation documents are being reviewed by six different ministries/departments within the Russian government which have to review the documents prior to reaccreditation. These include the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Services, General Prosecutor's Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Federal Security Service (FSB). This is one of the final steps in the reaccreditation process.

According to AWAA in Virginia, the Russian partner agency is in a good position for reaccreditation because there are no black marks against them and none of these ministries should have any reason to say anything negative about them. AWAA expects that when reaccreditation begins, its Russian partner agency will be in the first round of agencies to be reaccredited due to their good standing.

Its discouraging to hear that another delay has occurred, but we are hoping that this is the last.