Dzerzhinsk has played host to Oksky ParaFest, a festival of culture and sports

11 september 2023

September 6-7 saw Dzerzhinsk host Oksky Parafest, a festival for people with disabilities. This is one of the highlights of the nationwide calendar of inclusive events led by ParaPlan, a non-profit association of disabled individuals who are confined to using wheelchairs, that has been in charge of organizing these festivals since 2016 with the support of SIBUR's social investment program The Formula for Good Deeds.

Mikhail Chetvertakov, head of ParaPlan: 

Early on, we would send personalized invitations to our partners to attend the festival. Nowadays, by contrast, we have to pre-screen the festival's prospective participants. There are too many people wishing to attend our Oksky ParaFest, and so, objectively speaking, we had to get picky about whom we wanted to invite. We were careful not to turn down candidates from those regions that had not sent their representatives to the festival before. And, as always, we had put together both a challenging sports program and a packed cultural agenda. What matters to me personally is the passion shown by the attendees as no one was left unmoved by the fest’s events.

The festival's sports program included several tournaments featuring the Paralympic game of boccia, adaptive horseback riding, table tennis, Paralympic fencing, darts, checkers, a wheelchair dash event, sports orienteering, laser biathlon, and a game of shuffleboard (a game played on a marked-up table or court using cues and disc-like pucks, or just discs that get pushed by hand).

The festival's cultural program featured master classes on right-hemisphere-mode drawing, art therapy, soap-making, flower arranging, pottery, make-up, and psychology. The festival culminated in evening events including an evening of poetry featuring Nizhnekamsk’s Pavel Bukhanov, the Let's Get Married show, and a song concert.

Elena Snezhko, head of the social investment program The Formula for Good Deeds:

SIBUR has been supporting Oksky ParaFest since year one. The festival has grown to be a very popular event, and its organizers, led by our Formula for Good Deeds' partner Mikhail Chetvertakov, choose not to rest on their laurels and instead come up with something new every year. The main objective of the festival is to bring together participants from across various regions to share their experience and best practices. We are very happy that this year's festival was for the first time attended by participants from Nizhnekamsk, Kazan, Perm, and Tomsk, these cities having hosted a series of motivational meetings held as part of the You Can Do Anything! project.

The festival has brought more than 200 attendees from across 20 Russian regions and from neighboring countries.

Oleg Gromov, a participant of the festival from Tomsk:

Oksky ParaFest is a great model for bringing people with disabilities together. For me and for my son, this was an opportunity to share our experiences and make new friends. People at the festival got along really well, and the atmosphere was very cordial. I can't help but acknowledge the excellent work of Mikhail and his team, it was top-notch!