More than 70 social services practitioners took part in the events of the "World Around You" project

22 december 2021

SIBUR and Children's Villages SOS took stock of the results of the "World Around You" project designed to replicate practices of helping families in distress across the regions where the company operates. 2021 saw Voronezh, Nizhegorodskaya, and Amur Oblast host training seminars and workshops that brought together representatives from over 100 social services institutions.

Practitioners from Nizhegorodskay Oblast had been perfecting their art therapy techniques for a year. They worked together with the project’s supervisors from Children's Villages SOS to identify the most appropriate formats, approaches, and implementation phases and techniques for each institution, taking into account the unique nature of their target audiences. The results of the work were presented at the Art Workshop, held in Nizhny Novgorod on December 14-15. Its participants presented their art projects and plans for the use of the skills they had learned.

As practitioners operating within a certain environment, we are constrained by various restrictions. It was at this seminar that I allowed myself to loosen up for the first time in the last five years and it was in these surroundings that I adopted quite a few practices I found useful, something I plan to keep using, Tatiana Rogova, a participant of the Art Workshop in Nizhny Novgorod, commented.

What was most enjoyable was the atmosphere: it was as comfortable as it gets, and you didn't have to think about who was sitting in front of you. All boundaries, including age, were gone. Yet one could take away from the event a lot of ideas and practices that were given to us by the experts, Natalia Shibanova echoed other workshop participants.

Staff of involved institutions and non-profit organizations from Voronezh were offered to take part in a training session called "The Strength of One’ Kinship as a Family Resource" which included modules on working with a family genogram, making a resource map, storytelling techniques, and free-writing (writing texts without self-editing). More than 30 practitioners representing various care professions took part in the event.

Children's Villages SOS organized three webinars for Amur Oblast’s organizations addressing the subject of helping families whose family members suffer from substance and non-chemical addictions. Webinars participants were able to discuss the causes of addictions, the public's attitude to this problem, and various other special aspects of supporting addicts and their family members.

By passing on our views, approaches, methods and techniques, we contribute to making the world a better place. And if every practitioner participating in our training events could help at least one family or child, it would mean our efforts are not wasted, said Olga Lipnitskaya, National Advisor for Family Strengthening and Social Orphanhood Prevention Programs at the Russian Committee of Children's Villages SOS.

The "World Around You" project implemented under SIBUR's social investment program, the Formula for Good Deeds, was launched in April 2021 targeting practitioners representing care professions in Amur, Voronezh and Nizhegorodskaya Oblasts. All training events are available online for review

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The Formula for Good Deeds, SIBUR's social investment program, has been under implementation since February 2016, in all key cities where the company operates focusing on six key areas: urban development, education and science, sports and healthy living, environmental protection, culture, and volunteering. Further information about the program is available at: www.formula-hd.ru.

The Russian charity organization Children's Villages SOS started its operations back in 1994. The first Children's Village was founded in 1995 in Tomilino (Moscow Oblast’s Lyuberetsky District). Children's Villages SOS is a unique alternative to orphanages. This is a place where orphans and children left without parental care live in family homes, together with their SOS mothers, brothers and sisters, being provided with everything they need for their wholesome development in an environment of love, respect and trust. The vision is that every child should be entitled to growing up in a family: in an atmosphere of love, respect and safety. The mission is to provide children in distress with a caring family environment, to help them shape their future by contributing to the development of local communities they are a part of. Further information about the charity can be found at: https://sos-dd.ru/

Further information about the World Around You project can be found on the Formula for Good Deeds’ website at https://www.formula-hd.ru/projects/city/sos/