Dzerzhinsk hosted Oksky ParaFest, a culture and sports festival
12 september 2022
September 6-8 saw the city of Dzerzhinsk host its yet another Oksky ParaFest, a festival for people with disabilities. The city has been hosting this iconic event organized by ParaPlan, a non-governmental organization for people with disabilities confined to wheelchairs, and facilitated by SIBUR as part of its Formula for Good Deeds social investment program, since 2016.
Over its lifetime, Oksky ParaFest has evolved into an important element of Russia’s inclusivity calendar. In 2022, the festival welcomed over 200 members of the inclusive community representing 15 of Russia’s regions and several neighboring countries.
This year was the first time that Oksky ParaFest featured motivational sessions with such celebrity speakers as Daria Kuznetsova (Director of the Active Life Foundation and a member of the working group established under the Presidential Commission on Disability Affairs), Alexei Talay ( a Master of Sports in swimming, holder of multiple world and European records, member of the National Paralympic Team of Belarus, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and a father of four), Alexei Trantsev (Director for Development with the interregional Inclusivity Resource Center and an eight-time winner of presidential grant contests), and Victor Schastlivy (a public relations specialist with the I Love Life charity). These sessions became the final stage of You Can Do Anything!, an inclusive interregional project launched in 2022 by SIBUR together with ParaPlan, a non-profit association of the disabled in wheelchairs, and the Inclusive Resource Center. Previously, similar events had been held in in Voronezh, Nizhnevartovsk, and Tobolsk.
SIBUR has been supporting Oksky ParaFest ever since it was first established. It is one of the company’s most spectacular inclusive grant projects. The festival is a living embodiment of what it takes to build an inclusive community across the whole nation and beyond. We are excited that this community of like-minded individuals has been joined by members of communities where SIBUR has a base. As expected, the motivational sessions of the You Can Do Anything! project turned out to be extremely popular and a source of inspiration for all festival attendees, Elena Snezhko, Chief Expert and Manager of the Formula for Good Deeds Social Investment Program, noted.
The festival’s athletic program featured tournaments spanning 13 different disciplines, including such fest’s favorites as Paralympic boccia, sprint races in wheelchairs, table tennis, and checkers. The 2022 edition of the festival was the first to introduce competitions in shuffleboard (a game played on a marked scoring area using cues and pucks or weighted discs that can be pushed by hand), summer curling, and Paralympic wheelchair fencing.
The fest’s cultural program included musical concerts and creativity sessions conducted by the event’s partners. A passionate show put on by Sunrise, a Dzerzhinsk-based band, was one of Oksky ParaFest’s highlights.
This year' Oksky ParaFest presented a very packed program. We have taken it to a whole new level with the festival lasting 3 full days for the first time. We tried to squeeze into these three days all of the events and formats that we thought our participants had come to expect seeing. Now that the festival is over, perhaps that is the reasons we feel a little tired of the whirlpool of the fest’s events. But as always this will soon pass, and we will embark on starting to prepare for the next Oksky ParaFest, Mikhail Chetvertakov, the head of ParaPlan, a non-profit association of the disabled in wheelchairs, shared.
The festival really helps to consolidate the inclusive community made up of people hailing from different region of our country around some common values and interests. The people who come here are the individuals with disabilities who want to live full lives, take part in all available initiatives, and are ready to share their experience and ideas. This is very inspiring! Of special note was the first day’s program and its motivational sessions. Events such as this help reassess one’s lifestyle and prompt to action, Alena Farrakhova, one of the fest’s participants and an adaptive physical training instructor with a Nizhnevartovsk Sports School, noted.
Oksky ParaFest is a one-of-a-kind experience, events like this one are few and far between. The festival is important as it helps to inspire people with disabilities to live more fulfilling lives, to be more confident of themselves, and useful to others. You could feel it at the fest that people electrify each other and in that sense this year’s motivational sessions gave everyone an additional boost of positive energy, Olga Matveeva, a ParaFest participant and a member of the St. Petersburg chapter of the All-Russian Association of People with Disabilities, commented.