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My apologies to all Americans including President Emerick

In frustration that one of the primary reasons for the formation of eNOVA, helping the eUS, appeared to be being thwarted for political reasons that had more to do with the eUS Governments suspicion of me than with the value of eNOVA, I wrote a long treatise requesting that President Emerick relent. My frustration showed through the tone of my article, and for that I apologize.

On another note, other than just allowing me to air my frustrations, the other net positive that came from it was confirmation that, despite my best efforts to explain eNOVA during its formation and operations to the eUS Government, there is still clearly a misunderstanding as to what, exactly, eNOVA is…and while I know that I attempted to use this analogy before with limited success with President Emerick, I believe it bears repeating in the hopes that, perhaps, eNOVA can transition from being suspect to the perception of being partners.

First off, eNOVA is a private, non-partisan organization, it does not discriminate against members based on their party affiliation (we have representatives from pretty much the entire spectrum), government status (we have congress members and cabinet members from several nations), military affiliation (we have tons of members that are engaged in national military) or nationality (again we are pleased to have members from many nations). Since we are not subordinate to a given command structure, and all project efforts by members are strictly voluntary, we organize our project efforts around our charter which can be found here.

In eNOVA you are not required to do anything but fill out a membership application, pay a fee for membership and join our forums.

For all intents and purposes eNOVA is the eRepublik version of the Rotary or the Elks, without the need for sponsorship. As such, we are exceedingly transparent about our projects, perhaps too transparent at times…and the only time we keep a project confidential is to take advantage of the opportunity to use the element of surprise.

Now, I appreciate that the function of the Elks or the Rotary in RL may be a little foreign to some of our members, but both organizations have something in common...they recruit people for work efforts which benefit the community or promote success. They do building projects, parades, community events, etc. as a team regardless of their background or vocation.

For the most part they are very effective because of their ability to organize diverse members, communicate effectively and expeditiously, and probably most important recruit voluntary project team members with a shared goal based on their charter.

In the last 24 hours or so, there has been a lot of discussion in this thread on the eUS Forums from various government representatives about the merit of having such an organization outside of the purview and control of various departmental leads. I mark it up to a natural inclination for territoriality, but the point that I think is missed is that the request for eNOVA to disband to join these departments is counter-intuitive to the fact that any eNOVA member can join any government department as they desire, it would not change the unifying charter of eNOVA nor their status as a member unless they so choose. It would be like a RL government entity such as the Department of the Interior telling citizens that they cannot do a litter clean-up if they are members of the Rotary.

It appears that the basis of contention by many that consider eNOVA as suspect is the very reason that eNOVA, in my opinion, is a sound solution. We prefer to work as a team and be recognized for our efforts as a team, so that we can grow our member base and do more and bigger projects. Probably the ultimate scenario for the eUS government - eNOVA partnership relationship would be for the government to identify a project that they would like to see accomplished and then provide us with the consent and support necessary to accomplish with their welcome oversight.
eNOVA was designed to complement the efforts of the governments of our member nations, specifically the eUS, on behalf of the citizens…we have teams ready to contribute, we have the organizational structure to initiate projects and we have the communication capability to expedite engagement in the efforts. Unfortunately, it appears that the overriding obstacles to our desired partnership with the eUS government are suspicion of intent and subordination.

As I have already addressed suspicion of intent, I will now address subordination. One of the primary qualities which set eNOVA apart from several other organizations is our desire and design to compensate members for their efforts and to recognize members for their contributions. Everyone likes to be recognized for their efforts publically and everyone seeks freedom of choice in what activities they actually want to participate in. In eNOVA you are rewarded and recognized for your contributions to team goals, not unlike annual Rotary and Elks Awards that are bestowed. Further we have a scheduled compensation plan for most projects; therefore, while the eUS government would rather that eNOVA members subordinate their efforts to governmental department heads (and they are most certainly free to do so at their discretion, individually), I made an early commitment to the entire eNOVA team that they will be recognized and rewarded for team efforts, project completion and whatever else we choose to offer.

Since that recognition and compensation is not guaranteed by the governmental departments involved, to state that any effort on behalf of a government entity without a recognized partnership with eNOVA in the effort, is the same, is not accurate. Just as the RL US Government would not bestow Rotary awards, the eUS Government would not likely reward recognition for the team effort for eNOVA. The great part, is that the eNOVA member can have it both ways at their discretion, it would just be far more efficient to leverage the partnership, have eNOVA reward team members based on team accomplishments. However, for whatever reason, which I suspect has much to do with the lack of clarity as to eNOVA’s purpose, many governmental entities are reticent to use eNOVA.

There is also a great degree of miscommunication regarding the intent of eNOVA as regards some of the current functions or government and how we might be involved. Probably the easiest example in the Welcoming Committee which we were most certainly interested in helping with as it is a critical component of serving the new citizen of the eUS. eNOVA wanted to provide assistance in this area to expand and expedite communications to new citizens, set them up with a gifting exchange program and pretty much make sure that they were getting the headstart that they needed. Government oversight was welcome, and in fact, ligtreb, who has been doing such an awesome job already would be heading up the continuing project...we were even willing to furnish whatever resources were necessary to build the program and its reach for the eUS. And for compensation, we asked that eNOVA be recognized as part of the team that was delivering the service by placing a link in the Welcome Letter to the eNOVA forum for new citizens to consider joining…not unlike what the RL local Chamber of Commerce might seek for their support of a local business directory. And still there are many that howl that the compensation requested is too high.

The problem of the perception of "member nations" is one that we have dealt with since launch four weeks ago. I will end this WoT with a little clarification about that as well. While eNOVA aspires to assist new citizens, provide mentoring and start projects throughout all of eRepublik, we are not yet at a point where our resources are abundant enough to do so, therefore we have determined that our limited resources should be channeled to individual nations as we grow to get the most “bang for our buck”. For the benefit to eNOVA of being able to grow and be promoted as partners for success in eRepublik, we channel the majority of our resources (member effort and financial investment) into our member states. Many of our projects are specifically designed for individual member states, and we make every effort to contribute however we can to the sovereignty and right to self-determination of that member state in thanks for their partnership for their citizens.

So, in essence, member states are where we choose to spend most of our money and time.

I truly hope that this was helpful in understanding eNOVA, and again I apologize for the tone of my previous article.

Ananias
Founder, eNOVA