Tobolsk hosted a motivational meeting of SIBUR's You can do anything! inclusivity project

6 august 2022

On August 6, Tobolsk became the venue of a meeting of inclusive communities held as part of the interregional You Can Do Anything! project. This event was organized with the support of Tobolsk’s Regional Chapter of the All-Russian Association of the Disabled. The meeting was attended by a total of more than 70 participants.

Since 2022, the Formula for Good Deeds social investment program includes a separate Inclusivity focus area, in line with the priorities of SIBUR's Sustainable Development Strategy. The motivational meetings that took place in Voronezh, Nizhnevartovsk and Tobolsk have shown that we had made the right choice: a community of like-minded people in the cities where SIBUR has operations is already being formed with the You Can Do Anything! inclusivity project at its core. Subscribers of the City of Opportunities blog created as part of the project can’t wait to see each other face to face. One family in particular springs to mind. I am referring to the Stavtsevs from Raduzhny who purposely traveled all the way to Tobolsk to attend our event after the meeting in Nizhnevartovsk, Elena Snezhko, chief expert and head of the Formula for Good Things social investment program, commented.

The event opened with a dance performed by individuals in wheelchairs. This was made possible thanks to the Ray of Light grant project implemented under the Formula for Good Deeds social investment program.

During the first part of the meeting, Nikolai Lukyanov, a world champion in Paralympic fencing and a public figure, shared his secret of how not to give way to despair in any circumstances and fight to attain one’s goals.

The second part of the meeting focused on how to represent inclusivity on social networks. Aleksey Trantsev and Olga Lifanova, moderators of the City of Opportunities blog, discussed the key rules of effective work on social networks by using real-life examples, and presented the newly created inclusivity blog.

Events such as this are definitely needed both to motivate and to share the best practices of, say, how to handle and move around in a wheelchair. I used to play wheelchair basketball, and now I dance. Today I thought it would be fun to do some wheelchair fencing, so I decided to come out and fight opposite the world champion, noted Ilnar Murzaev, a meeting participant who demonstrated a fencing fight in a wheelchair vis-a-vis Nikolay Lukyanov.

These events are not just good to have, they are must-haves. Working in Tobolsk, I have been promoting the culture of getting people with disabilities integrated into public life. Among other things, our organization is very actively involved in promoting sports and exercise. That said, I can see that my example as a city leader with a doer’s attitude does not always work as expected to motivate people with disabilities in Tobolsk. Today, however, the meeting’s attendees witnessed firsthand other kinds of personal stories and other opportunities for self-fulfillment. I am sure everyone was really energized by this gathering. Right away, our activists started discussing new ideas and potential focus areas for their next projects, Natalia Varavko, chair of the Tobolsk District Chapter of the All-Russian Association of People with Disabilities, noted.

As part of a special inclusive tour, the event’s speakers had been given a tour of ZapSibNeftekhim, Russia’s largest petrochemical facility, right before the start of the motivational meeting.

SIBUR has been working on developing a business line of industrial tourism at ZapSibNeftekhim, and inclusive communities are one of our key target audiences in that respect. We were very glad to see that the leaders of the You can do anything! project had been able to witness firsthand and appreciate the scale and accessibility of the nation’s largest petrochemical facility, Yelena Fattakhutdinova, an expert with ZapSibNeftekhim’s protocol and corporate services unit, shared.

Our tour of ZapSibNeftekhim is yet another example of SIBUR's sensitive attitude to matters of diversity and inclusivity. This was clearly demonstrated during our visit to the petrochemical facility as evidenced by the organizers’ attention to the minutest of details, responsiveness of the site’s personnel and their willingness to improve such events even further and make them more accessible to everyone, Mikhail Chetvertakov, a partner of the You Can Do Everything! project and chair of ParaPlan, a non-profit organization of wheelchair users (Dzerzhinsk, Nizhegorodskaya Oblast), commented.

Earlier, similar motivational meetings for inclusive communities had already been held in Voronezh and Nizhnevartovsk as part of the You can do anything! project. The final event of the series will be held later this year in Dzerzhinsk.