Array ( [ID] => 531 [TIMESTAMP_X] => 2021-03-11 15:07:42 [IBLOCK_ID] => 5 [NAME] => Текст новости EN [ACTIVE] => Y [SORT] => 500 [CODE] => DESCRIPTION_EN [DEFAULT_VALUE] => Array ( [TEXT] => [TYPE] => HTML ) [PROPERTY_TYPE] => S [ROW_COUNT] => 1 [COL_COUNT] => 30 [LIST_TYPE] => L [MULTIPLE] => N [XML_ID] => [FILE_TYPE] => [MULTIPLE_CNT] => 5 [TMP_ID] => [LINK_IBLOCK_ID] => 0 [WITH_DESCRIPTION] => N [SEARCHABLE] => N [FILTRABLE] => N [IS_REQUIRED] => N [VERSION] => 2 [USER_TYPE] => HTML [USER_TYPE_SETTINGS] => Array ( [height] => 200 ) [HINT] => [VALUE] => Array ( [TEXT] => <p> Corporate volunteering is a fairly new phenomenon in Russia. It is currently being actively promoted by companies that have made sustainable business development and a sense of social responsibility for what is going on in communities of their presence a part of their overall strategy. Let us review why corporate volunteering is so important for companies and members of their staff. </p> <p> In a narrow sense of the word, corporate volunteering stands for employees’ personal involvement in tackling important social challenges with the support of their employers. However, if one were to take a broader look at the matter, it would become apparent that corporate volunteering is about opportunities, it is a way of changing the world for the better while evolving as an individual, improving one’s personality traits.. </p> <p> Corporate volunteering not only helps employees implement their ideas, but also enables them to develop and improve their "soft" skills, including creativity, organizational and leadership skills, resistance to stress. It teaches individuals to find optimal solutions in situations where multiple stakeholders may be pursuing their own, often conflicting, interests. By becoming a volunteer, an accountant may get a chance to try his or her hand at graphic design while a clerk may discover having a natural knack for organizing events. This enables members of staff to grow professionally, while also helping strengthen horizontal links within the team. </p> <p> Incidentally, younger individuals seeking employment have lately been increasingly cognizant of the need to ensure that their personal values and principles are aligned with the culture of the company they intend to spend at least some part of their professional life with. These job seekers want to ensure that their prospective employer will not only serve as a source of expected income, but that it has also succeeded in building an ecosystem of well-being, and a comfortable and healthy environment within its organization that gives everyone in it a sense of safety including not only physical safety and security, but also their psychological, emotional and mental safety. It is important for people to be able to continuously enhance their potential, develop their competencies in specific areas of interest, and become a better version of themselves than their "last year's version" was. They do care about both what is happening or what doesn't happen as a result of the activities of the company that employs them. And they are particularly concerned about what is going on in the communities, cities and municipalities they reside in. </p> <p> It is important for employers to be prepared to act in order to meet the requirements of their highly qualified employees who crave additional opportunities, in addition to meeting their fundamental needs such as their financial well-being, safe working conditions, social support measures). Volunteering programs and social projects do exactly that: they help employees discover some new personality traits that will enhance their ability to fulfil themselves and grow professionally. </p> <p> Companies realize that by developing their corporate volunteering programs, they benefit their own business, too. It helps them to be more effective in retaining their workforce, with building more cohesive teams, with growing productivity, and with improving staff loyalty. Employees may use volunteering events to discuss work-related matter with their colleagues from other units in an informal setting, establish rapport, and improve cohesion within their teams. This helps them to better understand underlying processes and deal with issues more effectively. </p> <p> Speaking of public and large-size companies, their support of corporate volunteering programs enables them to achieve even loftier goals. Their employees’ participation in environmental campaigns complements such companies’ efforts to achieve sustainable development goals and augments their contribution to reaching national environmental goals as is the case with companies implementing their energy saving and retrofitting measures. </p> <p> Thanks to FESCO Transportation Group's systemic approach to corporate volunteering the company has succeed in forging strong communities of like-minded individuals who take it upon themselves to organize various events on a regular basis, visit orphanages and animal shelters, take part in pursuing environmental initiatives, and support the Group's veterans while actively getting their family members and friends involved in their activities and joining efforts with partners. </p> <p> To provide further details about some of our volunteering activities, this past April saw a group of eco-activists have a clean-up day on the shores of the Maly Ajax Bay on Russky Island clearing the area from glass debris, plastic waste and other garbage. In all, the activists gathered and shipped off more than 100 bags of trash from the beach. All these volunteers were brought together by FESCO Transportation Group. The cleanup was co-organized by Primorsky Krai’s branch of the National Corporate Volunteering Council (NCVC) that has been headed by FESCO since November 2023, by Primorsky Krai’s Ministry of Economic Development, Primorsky Krai’s Regional Branch of <i>Opora Rossii</i>, the All-Russian non-profit organization of small and medium enterprises, and the Vladivostok Directorate of Public Spaces. The call to help clean up the area drew more than 60 volunteers representing both large-sized companies that had grown accustomed to taking part in such volunteering initiatives, and small and medium enterprises. </p> <p> In the course of another spring-time campaign, volunteers planted more than 30 saplings of trees and shrubs on the grounds of Vladivostok’s Pokrovsky Park, including such species as Asian bird cherry, Manchurian chokecherry, pear, cork tree, catalpa, lilac, cherry, and hawthorn. These and other saplings had been purchased thanks to FESCO Transportation Group’s <i>Sea of Opportunities </i>grant contest. The planting campaign was joined by activists of <i>Opora Rossii</i> along with the representatives of the Primorsky Krai’s Ministry of Economic Development and Primorsky Krai’s branch of the NCVC, as well as representatives of the Vladivostok Directorate of Public Spaces, the <i>My Business</i> Center, FESCO, Russian Railways, etc. FESCO had launched this eco-marathon in 2024 in order to promote SMEs’ great involvement in corporate volunteering activities. This work will be continued in 2025. </p> <p> In addition to pursuing an important environmental mission, the <i>Alley of Generations</i> campaign had sought to immortalize the feats of bravery performed by the Far Eastern Shipping Company’s service members during the Great Patriotic War. As part of the campaign, FESCO’s employees planted 25 fir trees in Moscow and Vladivostok. Each planted tree symbolizes the deeds performed by each of FESCO’s 25 ships and their crews involved in making heroic "voyages under fire" of that era. The company’s ships delivered essential supplies to various locations in the Pacific Ocean and in the North Atlantic, and saw action as part of allied convoys. 25 of the ships never got to return to their home port. The <i>Alley of Generation</i>s campaign was joined by the company’s employees, volunteers and veterans, along with the cadets of Admiral Nevelskoy Maritime State University who took part in the campaign in Vladivostok. The shipping group has long been involved in fruitful cooperation with the university, including cooperation along the lines of corporate volunteering. These activities were caried out with the support of the <i>Forest Volunteers, </i>an All-Russian non-profit movement. </p> <p> Last summer saw FESCO support the first-ever Maritime Festival on Popov Island. The festival brought together more than 200 participants from seven of Primorsky Krai’s cities including the company's corporate volunteers, journalists, tourists, and local residents. The idea behind the festival was to promote respectful attitude toward the environment and to support local communities. The project was funded by grants awarded by the FESCO Group as part of its <i>Sea of Opportunities</i> contest, as well as by a grant of the Presidential Grants Foundation. Environmental press club <i>The Last Environment</i> performed the role of the event’s organizer. </p> <p> One of FESCO's principal business partners, SIBUR, has made corporate volunteering an important focus area of its <i>Formula for Good Deeds</i> social investment program. Its objective of taking the overall number of corporate volunteers to the level of at least 30% of the company’s total headcount had been made a part of the Company's Sustainable Development Strategy. And this objective has already been met. Currently, corporate volunteers are making a considerable contribution to promoting responsible consumption of plastics and advancing the culture of separate waste collection in the country. Since SIBUR is the nation’s largest producer of polymer materials, it has made an important part of its corporate agenda the goal of adhering to the principles of circular economy and setting up an efficient plastics recycling system to ensure plastics’ re-use. This is the goal that is on the minds of many of the company's volunteers who have been active in raising awareness of this issues even further. </p> <p> Other areas that SIBUR employees’ volunteering efforts have been focused on include cleaning up and improving urban spaces in the cities where the company operates, teaching eco-lessons and conducting career guidance events at schools, providing regular assistance to vulnerable groups of children and adults, and supporting animal shelters. </p> <p> There are currently many different ways for one to join the volunteering movement, something that various non-profit and charitable organizations, associations of volunteering centers, large companies and other stakeholders have played an instrumental role in. But if we were asked to offer a more general piece of advice, then we would suggest that those who are interested in becoming a volunteer take the following steps: </p> <ul type="disc"> <li>Join national-level (or, in the case of businesses, corporate) campaigns and projects;</li> <li>Initiate your own volunteering project. There may be cases when all this would take is having the will and an idea, but sometimes it might require expending some financial resources. For situations like these, some companies organize contests of volunteering projects providing their winners with funding for implementing their ideas;</li> <li>Become a part of an already existing team of volunteers, i.e. those who, for example, have been helping a specific organization or focusing on dealing with a particular issue. Even if it may seem that your skills will not be seen to be of use, it never hurts to ask. There are cases when volunteers’ help can take the most unorthodox formats.</li> </ul> <p> It should not be a problem to find out about planned or ongoing volunteering activities in your region. Infrastructure-wise, corporate volunteering has expanded drastically over the recent years. The NCVC, that celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, has offices in 38 regions and it has been coordinating the efforts and resources of companies representing more than 30 industries with a view to advancing environmental, social and <i>pro bono</i> volunteering. Any company’s accession to the NCVC can be initiated by a single employee who is in charge for advancing volunteering in that company. It is also worth mentioning the Dobro.RF platform, the largest good-deeds platform in the country with nearly 5 million registered volunteers and almost 80,000 organizations on its roster. </p> <p> Large companies are actively advancing their own volunteering initiatives. To use just one example, FESCO Transportation Group, acting under the auspices of the NCVC, has been responsible for conducting the Corporate Volunteering Forum and the Corporate Volunteering School in Primorsky Krai. While these two platforms may pursue different objectives, they still share one common goal: that of advancing volunteering and getting people involved in implementing volunteering projects. The Corporate Volunteering School has already shown its effectiveness in attracting corporate activists from companies that are not affiliated with the NCVC. As part of this year's School, its attendees not only got to learn something new, exchange their contact details and learn about available volunteering support measures, but also homed in on a roadmap for pursuing joint social projects for 2025. </p> <p> Volunteering has become an indelible part of FESCO's corporate culture serving as the basis for establishing a corps of FESCO Volunteering Team’s ambassadors. Active employees help replicate volunteering practices across regions, which helps develop these initiatives without putting an unnecessary financial burden on the company. Most importantly, this motivates others to join volunteering initiatives because employees represent the face of corporate volunteering. </p> <p> Source: <a href="https://www.fesco.ru/ru/press-center/blog/formula-razvitiya-dobro/">https://www.fesco.ru/ru/press-center/blog/formula-razvitiya-dobro/</a>. </p> [TYPE] => HTML ) [DESCRIPTION] => [~VALUE] => Array ( [TEXT] =>

Corporate volunteering is a fairly new phenomenon in Russia. It is currently being actively promoted by companies that have made sustainable business development and a sense of social responsibility for what is going on in communities of their presence a part of their overall strategy. Let us review why corporate volunteering is so important for companies and members of their staff.

In a narrow sense of the word, corporate volunteering stands for employees’ personal involvement in tackling important social challenges with the support of their employers. However, if one were to take a broader look at the matter, it would become apparent that corporate volunteering is about opportunities, it is a way of changing the world for the better while evolving as an individual, improving one’s personality traits..

Corporate volunteering not only helps employees implement their ideas, but also enables them to develop and improve their "soft" skills, including creativity, organizational and leadership skills, resistance to stress. It teaches individuals to find optimal solutions in situations where multiple stakeholders may be pursuing their own, often conflicting, interests. By becoming a volunteer, an accountant may get a chance to try his or her hand at graphic design while a clerk may discover having a natural knack for organizing events. This enables members of staff to grow professionally, while also helping strengthen horizontal links within the team.

Incidentally, younger individuals seeking employment have lately been increasingly cognizant of the need to ensure that their personal values and principles are aligned with the culture of the company they intend to spend at least some part of their professional life with. These job seekers want to ensure that their prospective employer will not only serve as a source of expected income, but that it has also succeeded in building an ecosystem of well-being, and a comfortable and healthy environment within its organization that gives everyone in it a sense of safety including not only physical safety and security, but also their psychological, emotional and mental safety. It is important for people to be able to continuously enhance their potential, develop their competencies in specific areas of interest, and become a better version of themselves than their "last year's version" was. They do care about both what is happening or what doesn't happen as a result of the activities of the company that employs them. And they are particularly concerned about what is going on in the communities, cities and municipalities they reside in.

It is important for employers to be prepared to act in order to meet the requirements of their highly qualified employees who crave additional opportunities, in addition to meeting their fundamental needs such as their financial well-being, safe working conditions, social support measures). Volunteering programs and social projects do exactly that: they help employees discover some new personality traits that will enhance their ability to fulfil themselves and grow professionally.

Companies realize that by developing their corporate volunteering programs, they benefit their own business, too. It helps them to be more effective in retaining their workforce, with building more cohesive teams, with growing productivity, and with improving staff loyalty. Employees may use volunteering events to discuss work-related matter with their colleagues from other units in an informal setting, establish rapport, and improve cohesion within their teams. This helps them to better understand underlying processes and deal with issues more effectively.

Speaking of public and large-size companies, their support of corporate volunteering programs enables them to achieve even loftier goals. Their employees’ participation in environmental campaigns complements such companies’ efforts to achieve sustainable development goals and augments their contribution to reaching national environmental goals as is the case with companies implementing their energy saving and retrofitting measures.

Thanks to FESCO Transportation Group's systemic approach to corporate volunteering the company has succeed in forging strong communities of like-minded individuals who take it upon themselves to organize various events on a regular basis, visit orphanages and animal shelters, take part in pursuing environmental initiatives, and support the Group's veterans while actively getting their family members and friends involved in their activities and joining efforts with partners.

To provide further details about some of our volunteering activities, this past April saw a group of eco-activists have a clean-up day on the shores of the Maly Ajax Bay on Russky Island clearing the area from glass debris, plastic waste and other garbage. In all, the activists gathered and shipped off more than 100 bags of trash from the beach. All these volunteers were brought together by FESCO Transportation Group. The cleanup was co-organized by Primorsky Krai’s branch of the National Corporate Volunteering Council (NCVC) that has been headed by FESCO since November 2023, by Primorsky Krai’s Ministry of Economic Development, Primorsky Krai’s Regional Branch of Opora Rossii, the All-Russian non-profit organization of small and medium enterprises, and the Vladivostok Directorate of Public Spaces. The call to help clean up the area drew more than 60 volunteers representing both large-sized companies that had grown accustomed to taking part in such volunteering initiatives, and small and medium enterprises.

In the course of another spring-time campaign, volunteers planted more than 30 saplings of trees and shrubs on the grounds of Vladivostok’s Pokrovsky Park, including such species as Asian bird cherry, Manchurian chokecherry, pear, cork tree, catalpa, lilac, cherry, and hawthorn. These and other saplings had been purchased thanks to FESCO Transportation Group’s Sea of Opportunities grant contest. The planting campaign was joined by activists of Opora Rossii along with the representatives of the Primorsky Krai’s Ministry of Economic Development and Primorsky Krai’s branch of the NCVC, as well as representatives of the Vladivostok Directorate of Public Spaces, the My Business Center, FESCO, Russian Railways, etc. FESCO had launched this eco-marathon in 2024 in order to promote SMEs’ great involvement in corporate volunteering activities. This work will be continued in 2025.

In addition to pursuing an important environmental mission, the Alley of Generations campaign had sought to immortalize the feats of bravery performed by the Far Eastern Shipping Company’s service members during the Great Patriotic War. As part of the campaign, FESCO’s employees planted 25 fir trees in Moscow and Vladivostok. Each planted tree symbolizes the deeds performed by each of FESCO’s 25 ships and their crews involved in making heroic "voyages under fire" of that era. The company’s ships delivered essential supplies to various locations in the Pacific Ocean and in the North Atlantic, and saw action as part of allied convoys. 25 of the ships never got to return to their home port. The Alley of Generations campaign was joined by the company’s employees, volunteers and veterans, along with the cadets of Admiral Nevelskoy Maritime State University who took part in the campaign in Vladivostok. The shipping group has long been involved in fruitful cooperation with the university, including cooperation along the lines of corporate volunteering. These activities were caried out with the support of the Forest Volunteers, an All-Russian non-profit movement.

Last summer saw FESCO support the first-ever Maritime Festival on Popov Island. The festival brought together more than 200 participants from seven of Primorsky Krai’s cities including the company's corporate volunteers, journalists, tourists, and local residents. The idea behind the festival was to promote respectful attitude toward the environment and to support local communities. The project was funded by grants awarded by the FESCO Group as part of its Sea of Opportunities contest, as well as by a grant of the Presidential Grants Foundation. Environmental press club The Last Environment performed the role of the event’s organizer.

One of FESCO's principal business partners, SIBUR, has made corporate volunteering an important focus area of its Formula for Good Deeds social investment program. Its objective of taking the overall number of corporate volunteers to the level of at least 30% of the company’s total headcount had been made a part of the Company's Sustainable Development Strategy. And this objective has already been met. Currently, corporate volunteers are making a considerable contribution to promoting responsible consumption of plastics and advancing the culture of separate waste collection in the country. Since SIBUR is the nation’s largest producer of polymer materials, it has made an important part of its corporate agenda the goal of adhering to the principles of circular economy and setting up an efficient plastics recycling system to ensure plastics’ re-use. This is the goal that is on the minds of many of the company's volunteers who have been active in raising awareness of this issues even further.

Other areas that SIBUR employees’ volunteering efforts have been focused on include cleaning up and improving urban spaces in the cities where the company operates, teaching eco-lessons and conducting career guidance events at schools, providing regular assistance to vulnerable groups of children and adults, and supporting animal shelters.

There are currently many different ways for one to join the volunteering movement, something that various non-profit and charitable organizations, associations of volunteering centers, large companies and other stakeholders have played an instrumental role in. But if we were asked to offer a more general piece of advice, then we would suggest that those who are interested in becoming a volunteer take the following steps:

• Join national-level (or, in the case of businesses, corporate) campaigns and projects;
• Initiate your own volunteering project. There may be cases when all this would take is having the will and an idea, but sometimes it might require expending some financial resources. For situations like these, some companies organize contests of volunteering projects providing their winners with funding for implementing their ideas;
• Become a part of an already existing team of volunteers, i.e. those who, for example, have been helping a specific organization or focusing on dealing with a particular issue. Even if it may seem that your skills will not be seen to be of use, it never hurts to ask. There are cases when volunteers’ help can take the most unorthodox formats.

It should not be a problem to find out about planned or ongoing volunteering activities in your region. Infrastructure-wise, corporate volunteering has expanded drastically over the recent years. The NCVC, that celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, has offices in 38 regions and it has been coordinating the efforts and resources of companies representing more than 30 industries with a view to advancing environmental, social and pro bono volunteering. Any company’s accession to the NCVC can be initiated by a single employee who is in charge for advancing volunteering in that company. It is also worth mentioning the Dobro.RF platform, the largest good-deeds platform in the country with nearly 5 million registered volunteers and almost 80,000 organizations on its roster.

Large companies are actively advancing their own volunteering initiatives. To use just one example, FESCO Transportation Group, acting under the auspices of the NCVC, has been responsible for conducting the Corporate Volunteering Forum and the Corporate Volunteering School in Primorsky Krai. While these two platforms may pursue different objectives, they still share one common goal: that of advancing volunteering and getting people involved in implementing volunteering projects. The Corporate Volunteering School has already shown its effectiveness in attracting corporate activists from companies that are not affiliated with the NCVC. As part of this year's School, its attendees not only got to learn something new, exchange their contact details and learn about available volunteering support measures, but also homed in on a roadmap for pursuing joint social projects for 2025.

Volunteering has become an indelible part of FESCO's corporate culture serving as the basis for establishing a corps of FESCO Volunteering Team’s ambassadors. Active employees help replicate volunteering practices across regions, which helps develop these initiatives without putting an unnecessary financial burden on the company. Most importantly, this motivates others to join volunteering initiatives because employees represent the face of corporate volunteering.

Source: https://www.fesco.ru/ru/press-center/blog/formula-razvitiya-dobro/.

[TYPE] => HTML ) [~DESCRIPTION] => [DISPLAY_VALUE] =>

Corporate volunteering is a fairly new phenomenon in Russia. It is currently being actively promoted by companies that have made sustainable business development and a sense of social responsibility for what is going on in communities of their presence a part of their overall strategy. Let us review why corporate volunteering is so important for companies and members of their staff.

In a narrow sense of the word, corporate volunteering stands for employees’ personal involvement in tackling important social challenges with the support of their employers. However, if one were to take a broader look at the matter, it would become apparent that corporate volunteering is about opportunities, it is a way of changing the world for the better while evolving as an individual, improving one’s personality traits..

Corporate volunteering not only helps employees implement their ideas, but also enables them to develop and improve their "soft" skills, including creativity, organizational and leadership skills, resistance to stress. It teaches individuals to find optimal solutions in situations where multiple stakeholders may be pursuing their own, often conflicting, interests. By becoming a volunteer, an accountant may get a chance to try his or her hand at graphic design while a clerk may discover having a natural knack for organizing events. This enables members of staff to grow professionally, while also helping strengthen horizontal links within the team.

Incidentally, younger individuals seeking employment have lately been increasingly cognizant of the need to ensure that their personal values and principles are aligned with the culture of the company they intend to spend at least some part of their professional life with. These job seekers want to ensure that their prospective employer will not only serve as a source of expected income, but that it has also succeeded in building an ecosystem of well-being, and a comfortable and healthy environment within its organization that gives everyone in it a sense of safety including not only physical safety and security, but also their psychological, emotional and mental safety. It is important for people to be able to continuously enhance their potential, develop their competencies in specific areas of interest, and become a better version of themselves than their "last year's version" was. They do care about both what is happening or what doesn't happen as a result of the activities of the company that employs them. And they are particularly concerned about what is going on in the communities, cities and municipalities they reside in.

It is important for employers to be prepared to act in order to meet the requirements of their highly qualified employees who crave additional opportunities, in addition to meeting their fundamental needs such as their financial well-being, safe working conditions, social support measures). Volunteering programs and social projects do exactly that: they help employees discover some new personality traits that will enhance their ability to fulfil themselves and grow professionally.

Companies realize that by developing their corporate volunteering programs, they benefit their own business, too. It helps them to be more effective in retaining their workforce, with building more cohesive teams, with growing productivity, and with improving staff loyalty. Employees may use volunteering events to discuss work-related matter with their colleagues from other units in an informal setting, establish rapport, and improve cohesion within their teams. This helps them to better understand underlying processes and deal with issues more effectively.

Speaking of public and large-size companies, their support of corporate volunteering programs enables them to achieve even loftier goals. Their employees’ participation in environmental campaigns complements such companies’ efforts to achieve sustainable development goals and augments their contribution to reaching national environmental goals as is the case with companies implementing their energy saving and retrofitting measures.

Thanks to FESCO Transportation Group's systemic approach to corporate volunteering the company has succeed in forging strong communities of like-minded individuals who take it upon themselves to organize various events on a regular basis, visit orphanages and animal shelters, take part in pursuing environmental initiatives, and support the Group's veterans while actively getting their family members and friends involved in their activities and joining efforts with partners.

To provide further details about some of our volunteering activities, this past April saw a group of eco-activists have a clean-up day on the shores of the Maly Ajax Bay on Russky Island clearing the area from glass debris, plastic waste and other garbage. In all, the activists gathered and shipped off more than 100 bags of trash from the beach. All these volunteers were brought together by FESCO Transportation Group. The cleanup was co-organized by Primorsky Krai’s branch of the National Corporate Volunteering Council (NCVC) that has been headed by FESCO since November 2023, by Primorsky Krai’s Ministry of Economic Development, Primorsky Krai’s Regional Branch of Opora Rossii, the All-Russian non-profit organization of small and medium enterprises, and the Vladivostok Directorate of Public Spaces. The call to help clean up the area drew more than 60 volunteers representing both large-sized companies that had grown accustomed to taking part in such volunteering initiatives, and small and medium enterprises.

In the course of another spring-time campaign, volunteers planted more than 30 saplings of trees and shrubs on the grounds of Vladivostok’s Pokrovsky Park, including such species as Asian bird cherry, Manchurian chokecherry, pear, cork tree, catalpa, lilac, cherry, and hawthorn. These and other saplings had been purchased thanks to FESCO Transportation Group’s Sea of Opportunities grant contest. The planting campaign was joined by activists of Opora Rossii along with the representatives of the Primorsky Krai’s Ministry of Economic Development and Primorsky Krai’s branch of the NCVC, as well as representatives of the Vladivostok Directorate of Public Spaces, the My Business Center, FESCO, Russian Railways, etc. FESCO had launched this eco-marathon in 2024 in order to promote SMEs’ great involvement in corporate volunteering activities. This work will be continued in 2025.

In addition to pursuing an important environmental mission, the Alley of Generations campaign had sought to immortalize the feats of bravery performed by the Far Eastern Shipping Company’s service members during the Great Patriotic War. As part of the campaign, FESCO’s employees planted 25 fir trees in Moscow and Vladivostok. Each planted tree symbolizes the deeds performed by each of FESCO’s 25 ships and their crews involved in making heroic "voyages under fire" of that era. The company’s ships delivered essential supplies to various locations in the Pacific Ocean and in the North Atlantic, and saw action as part of allied convoys. 25 of the ships never got to return to their home port. The Alley of Generations campaign was joined by the company’s employees, volunteers and veterans, along with the cadets of Admiral Nevelskoy Maritime State University who took part in the campaign in Vladivostok. The shipping group has long been involved in fruitful cooperation with the university, including cooperation along the lines of corporate volunteering. These activities were caried out with the support of the Forest Volunteers, an All-Russian non-profit movement.

Last summer saw FESCO support the first-ever Maritime Festival on Popov Island. The festival brought together more than 200 participants from seven of Primorsky Krai’s cities including the company's corporate volunteers, journalists, tourists, and local residents. The idea behind the festival was to promote respectful attitude toward the environment and to support local communities. The project was funded by grants awarded by the FESCO Group as part of its Sea of Opportunities contest, as well as by a grant of the Presidential Grants Foundation. Environmental press club The Last Environment performed the role of the event’s organizer.

One of FESCO's principal business partners, SIBUR, has made corporate volunteering an important focus area of its Formula for Good Deeds social investment program. Its objective of taking the overall number of corporate volunteers to the level of at least 30% of the company’s total headcount had been made a part of the Company's Sustainable Development Strategy. And this objective has already been met. Currently, corporate volunteers are making a considerable contribution to promoting responsible consumption of plastics and advancing the culture of separate waste collection in the country. Since SIBUR is the nation’s largest producer of polymer materials, it has made an important part of its corporate agenda the goal of adhering to the principles of circular economy and setting up an efficient plastics recycling system to ensure plastics’ re-use. This is the goal that is on the minds of many of the company's volunteers who have been active in raising awareness of this issues even further.

Other areas that SIBUR employees’ volunteering efforts have been focused on include cleaning up and improving urban spaces in the cities where the company operates, teaching eco-lessons and conducting career guidance events at schools, providing regular assistance to vulnerable groups of children and adults, and supporting animal shelters.

There are currently many different ways for one to join the volunteering movement, something that various non-profit and charitable organizations, associations of volunteering centers, large companies and other stakeholders have played an instrumental role in. But if we were asked to offer a more general piece of advice, then we would suggest that those who are interested in becoming a volunteer take the following steps:

• Join national-level (or, in the case of businesses, corporate) campaigns and projects;
• Initiate your own volunteering project. There may be cases when all this would take is having the will and an idea, but sometimes it might require expending some financial resources. For situations like these, some companies organize contests of volunteering projects providing their winners with funding for implementing their ideas;
• Become a part of an already existing team of volunteers, i.e. those who, for example, have been helping a specific organization or focusing on dealing with a particular issue. Even if it may seem that your skills will not be seen to be of use, it never hurts to ask. There are cases when volunteers’ help can take the most unorthodox formats.

It should not be a problem to find out about planned or ongoing volunteering activities in your region. Infrastructure-wise, corporate volunteering has expanded drastically over the recent years. The NCVC, that celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, has offices in 38 regions and it has been coordinating the efforts and resources of companies representing more than 30 industries with a view to advancing environmental, social and pro bono volunteering. Any company’s accession to the NCVC can be initiated by a single employee who is in charge for advancing volunteering in that company. It is also worth mentioning the Dobro.RF platform, the largest good-deeds platform in the country with nearly 5 million registered volunteers and almost 80,000 organizations on its roster.

Large companies are actively advancing their own volunteering initiatives. To use just one example, FESCO Transportation Group, acting under the auspices of the NCVC, has been responsible for conducting the Corporate Volunteering Forum and the Corporate Volunteering School in Primorsky Krai. While these two platforms may pursue different objectives, they still share one common goal: that of advancing volunteering and getting people involved in implementing volunteering projects. The Corporate Volunteering School has already shown its effectiveness in attracting corporate activists from companies that are not affiliated with the NCVC. As part of this year's School, its attendees not only got to learn something new, exchange their contact details and learn about available volunteering support measures, but also homed in on a roadmap for pursuing joint social projects for 2025.

Volunteering has become an indelible part of FESCO's corporate culture serving as the basis for establishing a corps of FESCO Volunteering Team’s ambassadors. Active employees help replicate volunteering practices across regions, which helps develop these initiatives without putting an unnecessary financial burden on the company. Most importantly, this motivates others to join volunteering initiatives because employees represent the face of corporate volunteering.

Source: https://www.fesco.ru/ru/press-center/blog/formula-razvitiya-dobro/.

)