Tobolsk opened the Time of the Firsts, a youth co-working center
27 september 2022
As part of SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program, the Time of the Firsts youth co-working center opened at Tobolsk’s Secondary School No. 18.
The center does not feature the customary desks, the blackboard, or anything resembling a classroom. The co-working center is a cozy space where students can get together in their free time and informally brainstorm, discuss their ideas, and even share their innermost thoughts. The Time of the Firsts is the first and, so far, the only co-working center located in a school setting.
The youth area is housed in a dedicated room that comes complete with specially procured equipment and furniture. The room was refurbished following design plans developed with input from the students of School 18. The co-working center turned out to be vibrant, modern and comfortable, and, most importantly, it is so fitted out that you can use it to hold a round table, a conference, a training session, and much more.
Our plan is to use this center for hosting events of various formats including formal and informal meetings, seminars, workshops, master classes, and I am sure that this place will be useful not only for the students of our own school, but will also become a magnet for students from other schools of the city as we work on implementing our joint projects, Svetlana Sokolova, the school’s principal, commented.
The opening ceremony was held using the format of a "Class Meeting" where guest speakers presented the plan for future use of the co-working space and answered questions posed by students of the school and by activists of the Russian School Students' Movement.
It was a great pleasure to be present at this event as a speaker, to talk about myself, share my opinion and answer the students' questions. Thank you very much for inviting me, Igor Batuev, head of the DECO WOOD creative workshop, noted.
We are starting our project-based activities in the 10th grade and everyone needs support in order to properly design our projects, set goals and objectives. This space is helpful because it gives us an opportunity to get together with everyone, including our mentors, in a certain location, instead of picking just any available classroom, Ulyana Magarlamova, a School 18 student, commented.
The Time of the Firsts is not only a co-working space, it is a point of attraction for school students from around the city. We hope that it will become the breeding ground for many unique initiatives of our youths. We do not so much create projects that help transform the educational realm by ourselves as we support them, and the most important thing for us is to make sure that these projects are always generated by their principal users and we do hope that this trend will persist, Elena Belskaya, Head of Department for Government Relations and Social and Economic Projects at ZapSibNeftekhim LLC, shared.