Project Harmony was founded in 1985 by three people who shared the idea that personal contact between people of the US and USSR could help ease the tensions of the Cold War. Kathy Cadwell, an educator, Charlie Hosford, an architect, and David Kelley, a lawyer, were low on expertise but all the same were highly dedicated to their goal: to exchange student choir groups between high schools in America and the Soviet Union. They dubbed their efforts "Project Harmony" and in Spring 1985, a delegation of US teenagers from Harwood Union High School in Vermont went to Leningrad, USSR. This first performing arts exchange led to more programs. Soon, Project Harmony was initiating youth performing arts exchanges between New Englanders and people from all corners of the USSR. By 1990, the volunteer trio of Project Harmony had grown into a full-time staff of six people with a permanent office in Waitsfield, VT, and a brand new office in Leningrad, USSR.

Project Harmony benefited from many historical events in the 1980s and early 1990s. The Geneva Peace Accords, the crumbing of the Berlin Wall and the passage of the Freedom Support Act all helped Project Harmony embark on a campaign to broaden its programmatic scope to include student groups with widely varying interests. Project Harmony received its first grants from the United States government to continue the work it had begun by fundraising from private donations. In the early 1990s, Project Harmony initiated school exchanges that focused on ecology, calling on participants to use their classroom knowledge of biology and chemistry to consider the problems of polluted lakes and streams in the US, Latvia and Russia. The Cultural Heritage Program asked participants to research folk traditions and geneology. Project Harmony hosted several hundred students from all over the NIS who were selected to study in American schools for a semester or one year. The host families of those students - many of whom are still in touch today - were the backbone of those programs and lent vivid testimony to the purpose of putting people ahead of politics.

As its network of US and NIS partners grew, Project Harmony began looking for new ways to support the communities in which it had worked so hard for nearly a decade. Project Harmony leapt at the opportunity to work with small business leaders, educators, and environmentalists - all people who demonstrated the ethic of participating in the civic life and future development of one's community. These initiatives focused on the capacity of citizens to support and create democratic institutions in their communities. Programs such as Business for Russia, Law Enforcement Exchanges and the Domestic Violence Community Partnership began providing highly specialized training to NIS professionals from diverse backgrounds. Through Community Connections, Russians, Ukrainians, Moldovans and Georgians were welcomed into the homes and workplaces of their American colleagues and developed lasting collaborative partnerships between people and institutions.

Most recently Project Harmony has entered into a new era of collaboration and partnership in the cyber-world of new information technologies. Seizing the potential of the Internet and high-speed communications, Project Harmony is better able than ever to provide people with tools and information to build strong, interdependent communities. Access to information remains the key to breaking down the barriers that separate people, and Project Harmony is proud to operate more than 150 Internet access computer centers in universities, schools and libraries in Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. By providing specialized seminars and training programs for Internet and computer users, Project Harmony is ensuring that people can use those technical resources to their full potential.

Since those triumphal years of breaking down walls and building personal relationships, Project Harmony has grown in size and scope to embrace new countries, new ideas and new horizons. The staff, budget, responsibilities and visibility have increased exponentially since those first heady days of attempting the impossible. In the process of that growth and expansion, Project Harmony has held fast to its founding principles. Among these ideals lies one concept from which all others radiate: that people everywhere have the power to change their communities.

In pursuit of that ideal, Project Harmony now provides a diverse array of programs, such as Internet training for non-profit leaders, community service opportunities for teenagers and seminars on political leadership for Russian women. These programs touch communities all over the Newly Independent States and United States, encompassing countries whose names only recently appeared on maps. One truth remains steadfast seventeen years after Project Harmony's first exchange: that our shared problems and shared dreams transcend the barriers of language and culture.