The programs deal with a wide variety of issues, including millions of dollars in loans to industrial giants, grants to support the media, campaigns to protect local wildlife, stipends for education in foreign universities, and even efforts to distribute disposable syringes to drug addicts.
Several organizations exist to coordinate the activities of such programs.
For example, one of the missions of the Regional Initiative is to coordinate all US-sponsored technical assistance activities in the Russian Far East with the objective of maximizing their cumulative effect. Naturally, the regional authorities and population are happy to receive western financing to resolve global and local problems. The firm, established by a group of local scholars, intends to create a garbage-processing plant on the basis of American technology. Anyone who has watched through their car window as bulldozers spread out the smoking garbage at the Vladivostok city dump, just a few kilometers from a scenic beach, cannot help but be grateful for the Ecolinks project. According to the plans, the factory will not only burn trash in an environmentally-friendly way, it will generate heating energy for the city and reutilize many waste products.