Nizhny Novgorod Hosted Launch of The World Around You 2021, a New Project of SOS Children's Villages and SIBUR

2 april 2021

With SIBUR’s support, SOS Children's Villages, an international charitable organization, has launched the "World Around You 2021" project. The project’s objective is to support families and children in crisis through art therapy tools. The project also includes seminars and training sessions for experts representing helping professions.

Th project events will be taking place in Nizhny Novgorod, Amur and Voronezh Oblasts from April to October 2021.

The project’s kick-off event was a seminar held in Nizhny Novgorod on March 31 and April 1. It was attended by 27 employees of charitable foundations, public welfare organizations and educational institutions from Nizhny Novgorod, Dzerzhinsk, and Chkalovsk. Under the tutelage of experts from SOS Children's Villages, the experts from Nizhny Novgorod learned about various art therapy methods used when working with families in crisis, while also performing special art therapy assignments, developing their creative skills and setting the foundation for their own art projects.

This is the first time I’m attending a seminar put on by SIBUR and SOS Children's Villages. I appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to plunge straight into practical work. I was originally trained as a psychologist but art as therapy was a very new concept to me. Working together with my colleagues who also attended the seminar, we are going to embark on developing an art project of our own together with our charges from the orphanage, said Natalya Kutyreva, an employee of "Korablik", a state-run orphanage in Libezhevo, a suburb of Chkalovsk.

After completing the seminar, the participants of the "World Around You" project will be able to take advantage of a special online program that will be run for six months from April to September 2021. It will primarily focus on learning to work with art objects such as drawings, musical recitals, and theatrical performances, as well as on preparing for their presentations of projects scheduled for autumn.

Art projects offer everyone a chance to be heard. Anyone is capable of expressing themselves, their feelings and emotions through their drawings or via sound and movement. In Nizhny Novgorod, we gave all the participants an opportunity to express themselves as creative individuals and appeal to their inner potential and inspiration. We are at the beginning of our journey and I hope that further interesting art projects developed by the participants await us, commented Olga Lipnitskaya, Head of Child Abandonment Prevention and Family Strengthening Programs at Russia’s Chapter of SOS Children's Villages.