ABSTRACT
Providing services is important, since they make a practical everyday difference to people; and many public services express a right - to free education and health services, for example; and other rights, for example, the right to vote, depends on a service or infrastructure being available. NGOs are active in services provision and rights promotion all around the world. One of very earliest Russian regions to experiment with NGO inputs to social policy and care services was Perm city and oblast, located slightly to the west of the Ural Mountains. Development NGOs work in a very different way from trade unions, despite many potential areas for collaboration. Trade unions are another key subsection in civil society. In the Soviet time, they became ‘transmission belts’ for the provision of social welfare and participation of the workforce at an enterprise level.
