UrBC, Yekaterinburg, May 27, 2019. Mezhdurechensk school students presented their projects at Children’s Foresight, a program coordinated by EVRAZ Holding, the Social Initiatives Fund, Mezhdurechensk Council, and the One-Employer Town Development Fund.

According to EVRAZ Raspadskaya Coal Company’s PR Department, Children’s Foresight took off in March 2019. The students had to work in teams to develop and then present their projects and ideas at a foresight session. The program also covered workshops and master classes by the authors of successful social initiatives Alexander Shcheryakov and Ksenia Stepanenko and business coach Anna Zuyeva.

The next stage is for the contestants to implement their projects. Some of the teams have already found support and/or funding for their proposals. For one, volunteers, veterinary clinics, and pet shops have already agreed to help a homeless animal rescue project. Students’ parents are willing to support a school environment improvement project. The town council’s urban improvement, transport, and communication committee agreed to help introduce schedules directly at bus stops (yet another project). Finally, the local media also promised to provide coverage.

‘The students’ projects are quite interesting and relevant to both their small towns in particular and the Russian urban locations in general. We’ve already held similar foresight sessions in Kachkanar and Nizhniy Tagil, and many of the projects can really get re-implemented on a larger scale. What we need to understand is what resources we could find for the projects’ implementation and how to bring them onto the national scale,’ says the Social Initiatives Fund’s Director-General Sergey Golubev.