Here’s the situation. 1. There’s us and our campaign headquarters. We already have thousands of volunteers, but we need more: campaign cubes (street picket stands), meetings with voters, poster posting, leaflet drops in mailboxes, stickers, banners—all of this requires helping hands and committed minds to organize those hands. 2. There are thousands of people across the country stuck in their hometowns, bored out of their minds and eager to help us. First and foremost, these are students and young people in general. And it’s great: work hard for the campaign during the day, then spend the night seeing the sights of Moscow and having a great time with like-minded people. There’s only one thing stopping them: they have nowhere to stay in Moscow, and hotels are expensive. 3. There are thousands of Muscovites who definitely have a spare place to sleep and would be happy to share it with a volunteer coming to Moscow to help us with the campaign. So what do we need? We need MosVpiska, which I’m delighted to present to you. http://mosvpiska.navalny.ru/ It’s a service for finding a free couch with a like-minded person in Moscow.
Do you live in Moscow and can host a volunteer for a few days?
Go there and offer it. Want to come to Moscow and help us with the campaign?
Go there and look through the options. It works! Once you register, you’ll see search results: send requests right away to the apartments with descriptions you like. The apartment owner will look over your profile and decide whether to accept or ignore your request. Got a notification with a positive reply? Accept it! The host approves your request, and you’ll receive each other’s contact details so you can communicate freely outside the service. Don’t forget that people are different, and so are their personalities and habits. Talk to each other on the phone. Look carefully through each other’s social media profiles. Take basic precautions. Be polite. Don’t be pushy. This is not a paid accommodation service, or a general housing service in Moscow. It’s for volunteer campaigners. We need: 1) Applicants and campaigners for our cubes (http://cube.navalny.ru). A cube applicant is someone who files a notice with the prefecture (district administration) for a picket three days in advance. On the day of the Cube, with help from headquarters, they receive the Cube itself and campaign materials, stay on site for several hours, and organize the volunteer campaigners who come to the cube. This is important—the cube won’t file itself! Plus, your new volunteer-campaigner friends will be there with you. The team will move from cube to cube, helping hand out leaflets and newspapers and talking to passersby. The good news: cubes are held every day, so you’ll definitely get your chance to be cube captain for a day. Really want to help but don’t know HOW? Every evening, the headquarters runs training sessions for campaigners. 2) Auto-cubes! A new kind of campaigning aimed at motorists eager to put stickers on their cars. What could be better: you campaign just by driving around the city, and you hardly have to do anything. At an auto-cube, volunteers hand out stickers and help put them on right away. 3) Muscovites want to hang our beautiful banners from their balconies, but they hesitate. Help them! Not everyone is ready to pick up banners and hang them themselves, but you can become part of an indispensable team that comes in, quietly fixes everything, hangs the banners, and gets it all sorted out. 4) Ever dreamed of taking over Moscow? Then join the team putting up posters and leaflets around the city. Visually taking over the city matters. City residents should know: they are not alone—we are everywhere (and victory is inevitable). 5) Sociology. Channel One and VTsIOM (the state-run public opinion center) won’t tell us the truth. But you can! We regularly conduct independent sociological research: one intensive training at headquarters, and you’re a field sociologist! The work isn’t easy, but WHAT A FEELING it is when we see truly independent research. 6) Are you young and still full of energy? We need raw physical strength at headquarters—to unload, carry, and assemble materials. Couldn’t even make it to this line and already bought your tickets? Don’t rush. First go to http://mosvpiska.navalny.ru, fill in the search fields, and come back—very soon you’ll get updates on the status of your requests. MosVpiska is one of the headquarters’ important projects, and we’re sure it will work. We tested it for a long time and on different groups. Come join us soon. And just as importantly, help us find overnight places for those coming in. Hooray! http://mosvpiska.navalny.ru/