News

Sergey Kuryokhin Award Ceremony Takes Place

On 5 April 2014, the Sergey Kuryokhin Award Ceremony took place in St. Petersburg. The Award established five years ago honours the best projects relating to modern art, stagecraft and modern music. This year, the Grand Prix was given to the project "Utopia Reconstruction" by Peter Aidu and his Musical Lab, a large-scale performance reconstructing the Soviet musical epoch of the 1920s.

Board of Guardians of Joyful Old Age Foundation Holds Session.

On 3 April 2014, the Board of Guardians of the Joyful Old Age Foundation held its opening session. Board members comprise people, whose help and support to the Foundation have been considerable for a long time, including Elena Beregovaya, Director of the Vladimir Smirnov Foundation. Our Foundation has been collaborating with the Joyful Old Age Foundation since the volunteer movement stage and covers now the bulk of its administration costs. We are happy to be on the Board of Guardians of such a brilliant foundation.

RF Government Board On Guardianship in the Social Sphere Holds Sessions

On 1 and 9 April 2014, the RF Government Board on Guardianship in the Social Sphere held sessions chaired by Vice Prime Minister Olga Golodets at the Russian Federation Government House. The 1 April session brought together representatives from the Russian Ministries of Public Health, Labour, Justice as well as the Russian Federal Penal Service and Russian Ombudsman. The 9 April session focused on protection of health, mother and child in places of confinement. Key topics included pregnant and lying-in women and those with children held in pretrial detention; Proposals to organize new detention forms for children whose mother is a convict; Improvement of the medical care and sanitation at child centres within the criminal punishment system.

Tatyana Veter at PROFLAB

On 30 March and 6 April, within the framework of the PROFLAB educational course, Tatyana Veter will speak about socio-psychological and pedagogic methods of diagnostics, training of adults in conflictology and basics of psychological consulting. Tatyana is a psychology consultant, methodologist, and coach with a vast experience in training and professional improvement of educational psychologists. The lecture will be run as a training session enabling trainees to practice the skills on themselves and other trainees.

Workshop on Social Adaptation of Orphans

The friendly Nadezhda Charitable Foundation in the Vladimir region invited our Foundation to a workshop on social adaptation of orphans, which was held on 27-28 March 2014. The workshop aimed to explore successful experience in post-boarding school adaptation on the grounds of the Nadezhda Charitable Foundation and at educational institutions of the Vladimir Region Education Department. The Nadezhda Foundation was established in August 1996. Since then, its personnel have helped school leavers in five (Vladimir, Kostroma, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Kirov) regions obtain education, find a good job, start a family, choose correct life priorities, build self-confidence and become estimable citizens of this country.

Children from Kolychev Boarding School Tour Kremlin Grounds

Children from the Kolychev Boarding School stayed in Moscow on 27 and 28 March as our guests. They took a stroll along Arbat to discover all local attractions. The Moscow Kremlin Museum helped arrange a tour for the boys and girls around the Kremlin grounds comprising visits to the Cathedrals of the Assumption, the Archangel Michael, and the Annunciation. Especially, the sightseers were struck by the Czar Bell, whose fragment lying nearby, if touched, is believed to give strength and health, the more so if it is done by a group.

The Bolshoi Hosts First Night of Grani International Project

On 26 March, the Bolshoi hosted the first night of the Grani International Project, and on 27 March, a small dinner party was held in honor of Diana Vishneva, the prima ballerina of the Project. Performances are to be given on the New Stage and Diana along with Grishko, a garment and footwear maker for all types of dance, and Tatyana Parfenova, a designer, will present a joint collection of professional ballet costumes.

Visit to Home of ROST

On 26 March, we had a warm reception at the Home of ROST family. The boys showed us their school marks, which were not very high. We focused on ways to improve the situation and enlarge the syllabus and emphasized the importance of exact sciences. At parting, boys and girls presented us a poster featuring warm thanks.

Spring Gift for Cherntsk Boarding School

On March 2014, we delivered to the Cherntsk Boarding School the material children needed to make their beloved handicraft articles. It is amazing how ordinary material owing to painstaking work can be turned into fabulous and splendid things!

"The Boys of Freedom Street" to Be Screened at the Documentary Film Center

On 29 March, "The Boys of Freedom Street", a new film by Elena Pogrebizhskaya, will be screened from 21.00 to 23.00 at the Documentary Film Center located at 2 Zubovsky blvd., Moscow. Since the Documentary Film Center operates as a movie theater, tickets are sold a few days before a show begins. Aleksandr, the protagonist of the film, is a young man, a former volunteer working with children's homes, who becomes a guardian for a boy from one of them, and later for the boy's elder brother, too. Aleksandr, Sasha for short, meets a mixed response. He is writing a blog exposing the everyday life of a young adoptive father in the course of acquiring mutual tolerance. Some people throw dirt at him for his revelations and accuse him of every deadly sin, the other vigorously support and give advice. The picture shows a home where adopted children and their father, fostering the boys without a mother, live and gives an insight into their life with its problems and solutions to them.

VLADIMIR SMIRNOV FOUNDATION