If you've done a good deed, you are entitled to enjoying a dance!
14 july 2023
SIBUR has been maintaining a long-established a tradition of doing good "for free". In order to make volunteering even more exciting and fun, this year ZapSibNeftekhim organized a Champions of Good Deeds contest as part of its EcoChella project. The contest’s winners were presented with tickets to a concert by Leonid Agutin who is the headliner of the Summer in the Tobolsk Kremlin festival.
Being able to bring tours of top-caliber performers to the city is another one of SIBUR’s trademarks. This summer, the residents of Tobolsk had already had a chance to attend a jazz concert given by Igor Butman, whereas in seasons prior to that they had been offered to listen live to performances by such opera stars as Ildar Abdrazakov and Veronika Dzhioeva, the choir and soloists of the Moscow-based Helikon Opera Musical Theater, and the Novaya Rossiya orchestra led by Yuri Bashmet.
On July 15, ten "champions of good deeds" representing the teams of ZapSibNeftekhim’s Occupational Safety and Health Service and Environmental Protection Department will be able to enjoy dancing in the open air to the tunes of Leonid Agutin's hit songs on Tobolsk’s Red Square.
In total, five teams took part in the contest including the OHS-E Team, the Production Team, the ES Team, the Youth Team, and the Club Team. Together, they had performed 33 good deeds, with 18 of those focusing on conservation and environmental protection.
Darya Cherepanova, an expert with the Department of Government Relations and Socio-Economic Projects, a member of the contest’s jury:
Choosing the winners was not an easy job. All the participants had demonstrated their passion, creativity, originality, and initiative. But still, the terms of the contest required that we had to select the winners.
As a first order of priority, we counted the number of the good deeds done by the contestants, followed by our evaluation of their creativity. What mattered to us was for the teams to not only do the deeds off the suggested list, but also to come up with initiatives of their own. A key requirement was to be active on social networks by posting reports with texts, photos, and videos, as a way of incentivizing others to do good deeds as well.
Speaking about creativity, the top team won us over with their unorthodox way of getting Tobolsk residents involved in the conservation movement. The idea they came up with during the campaign to rid the banks of the river of trash near the river port was to hand out reusable and spacious eco-bags to passers-by.
Another memorable piece of experience was the ES Team's decision to forego the use of their personal automobiles over the weekend and ride bicycles instead. This seems to be an excellent case to keep in mind for upcoming company-wide campaigns. The Club team arranged a gratuitous lunch at Tobolsk's social cafeteria and provided meals to those in need. The Youth (Molodezhka) Team organized a master class for attending parents and their children dedicated to making eco-bags.
I am confident that each of the teams did their good deeds not for the sake of winning and getting free tickets to the concert, but out of their sincere desire to help. Getting encouraging feedback from the contestants was another pleasant outcome. Our colleagues saw that by joining their efforts they can make the world a better place and stand up to any challenge.
Ekaterina Efimenko, Lead Environmental Engineer, a member of the winning OHS-E team:
At first, the task of getting together 10 individuals simultaneously for taking part in a campaign seemed like an insurmountable challenge. After all, everyone had their own things to take care of, including home chores and family affairs, so this was the biggest challenge. We had to start somewhere. We reviewed the list provided to us and picked those things that members of our department found relevant and what was best understood. We collected and delivered plastic waste, wastepaper, plastic caps, old batteries, second-hand items to waste collection points, while also donating second-hand books to the city’s library.
But we wanted to do something grander than that. And then we learned that our volunteer friends had been fixing up used cars and shipping them to the SMO zone to be used by our Siberia battalion. We decided to collect humanitarian aid for the guys stationed there, including canned food, spam, condensed milk, biscuits, and other similar treats from the residents of Tobolsk. From the get-go, everyone on our team was really enthusiastic about doing this.
And as the number of our good deeds kept growing, so did our eagerness. We then turned to cleaning the banks of the Irtysh. We travelled to the city beach, to the Rechport river port. We combed the whole area and picked up all the garbage we could find - there is always a lot of it along the river’s banks. The banks might not stay tidy for too long, but I am sure that those who took part in the cleanup will never leave waste behind themselves. And they will also teach their children to keep things neat. Hopefully, the passers-by and people enjoying their day off who got our eco-bags will also come to the realization that keeping our city and its outskirts tidy is not someone else's job but rather our common cause and responsibility.
It is very gratifying to learn that our efforts have been so highly appreciated. We did not expect that we would necessarily win, because all the contestants carried out very inspiring campaigns. When we found out that we had been picked as the winners, our whole team literally screamed "Hurrah!" in unison. That’s how excited we were. Especially considering that we had won such a wonderful prize, the tickets to attend the Festival and the performance by Leonid Agutin, one of our favorite stars. As they say: Work hard, play hard! We’ve earned the right to enjoy some dancing!