UrBC, Magnitogorsk, April 8, 2019. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) keeps directing funds to Viktor F. Rashnikov’s charity project Magnitogorsk’s Gifted Children. MMK’s Director-General Pavel Shilyayev signed a list of candidates who get on the program this year, the company’s press service reports.

Last year, a series of school contests across a range of subjects got coordinated in Magnitogorsk. The winners, as well as the young students who won in city-wide, regional, and national competitions (forty-three people all in all), all got long-listed for Viktor Rashnikov’s Magnitogorsk’s Gifted Children Program.

The judges’ panel selected twelve school students as the program’s finalists for this year; sixty-three more young people who were on the program in 2011-2018 joined the project this year as well. The teens and young adults on Magnitogorsk’s Gifted Children Program will get certificates and monthly scholarships.

The program was set up with support from and at the initiative of MMK Chair of the BOD Viktor Rashnikov in 2003 and aims to help young locals actualize their creative and intellectual potential, develop their aptitudes, and shape their personal and professional identities. In 2018, MMK directed more than RUB 1 million to scholarships for vocational school and college students alone.