Trust for Mutual Understanding

The Trust for Mutual Understanding (TMU) supports exchanges in the arts and the environment (and the intersection of the two) between professionals from the United States and our geographic region of 28 countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. **History** The Trust for Mutual Understanding was established in 1984 by an anonymous American philanthropist as a private, grantmaking organization dedicated to promoting improved communication, closer cooperation, and greater respect between the people of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Our founder believed the greatest good could be achieved by encouraging people – individual citizens – to grow in understanding of each other and to appreciate each other’s languages, cultures, and value systems, both shared and different. She believed the “mutual understanding” resulting from these direct interactions at a human level (largely prohibited by governments at that time) was the essential first step toward achieving peaceful and lasting relationships among nations in the nuclear age. Supporting exchanges between professionals in the arts and the environment was part of her original vision based upon a deep appreciation of the importance of both cultural and ecological cooperation during times of political strife. After nearly 40 years, the grantmaking of the Trust for Mutual Understanding still reflects the conviction that supporting direct, international, person-to person contact and professional collaboration in the arts and the environment can encourage global harmony. Supporting these relationships is no less urgent today within the context of a global pandemic; political division, conflict, and war; a cataclysmic climate crisis; and systemic economic, social, and racial inequities. Nevertheless, there remains relatively little funding for such direct exchanges, particularly among people in [our geographic focus](https://tmuny.org/about) of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe; the Baltic States; Central Asia; the Caucasus, and Mongolia. What little support there is—mainly governmental—is often restricted by political considerations. We remain committed to supporting exchanges to enable creative and talented people from different countries to come together to freely share ideas and foster creative expression and environmental stewardship in a nonpolitical context