Final Forum of Local Communities in Leningrad Oblast Took Place

Over the weekend, on December 16, the final Forum of Local Communities of the Leningrad Region was held in the creative cluster of ARTMUZA, in which more than 100 representatives of the active non-profit sector of the Leningrad Region took part.

ARTMUZA is the largest creative cluster of contemporary art in St. Petersburg.

In 2013, the premises of the former Muzdetal musical instrument factory turned into an association of creative people in terms of painting, sculpture, design and interior design, transforming an industrial building into a cultural place for creativity and recreation. The final forum completed a series of events in 2017, organized with the support of the Press and Public Relations Committee of the Leningrad Region in the Gatchina, Vsevolozhsk, Sosnovoborsk and Tikhvin regions. As part of the final Forum, master classes of various formats, lectures, presentations and joint searches for ideas in the OpenSpace format were held.

Ekaterina Kochneva said that in February 2017, the social network launched the VKontakte Charity program with a wide range of tools for promoting non-profit organizations. A donation app, an educational program, and advertising opportunities are just the main tools that NGOs can use right now. But in order to use this arsenal, you need to know your audience and understand how to communicate with it.

Ekaterina Skobeiko spoke in detail about the intricacies of writing posts for communities, designing pages and promoting NGO communities.

In parallel, there were lectures from the Center for Applied Urban Studies, the Live Dialogue festival, the Good City of Petersburg Foundation, and the Lawyers for Civil Society association. Different speakers were united by a common theme - the development and new tools of the non-profit sector.

An expert from the Center for Applied Urban Studies Svyatoslav Murunov shared urban moderation technologies and new ways to unite activists, government and business.

Lilia Gabdullina from the Living Dialogue Foundation touched upon the topic of personal self-determination of a person in the non-profit sector, and also told how to better establish a dialogue with the modern young generation, the so-called Generation Z.

The Good Cities Foundation has been implementing its own technologies for bringing together local communities for several years now. How to do this through the festival project was told by Yulia Nikolaeva, head of the "Good Cities" direction at the "Good City of St. Petersburg" Charitable Foundation.

Ekaterina Shcherbakova, lawyer of the Lawyers for Civil Society Association, shared information about the current legislative regulation, recent changes in the field of NPO activities, and spoke about the possible consequences of non-compliance with the norms in the field of NPO activities.

As part of the forum, a 30-minute presentation of the Business Class program from Sberbank and Google took place. Back on December 5, Sberbank and Google, with the support of the government of the Leningrad Region, launched the free Business Class program. At the Forum, representatives of PJSC Sberbank Anna Garmash and Anatoly Proskuryakov confirmed that the authors of non-profit projects in the Leningrad Region will also be able to take part in the program, which starts on March 1, 2018, spoke about the opportunities and invited active social activists to register on the official website of the program right now.

The central activity of the Forum was Open Space (open space format) on the topic "In search of an image of the future non-profit sector." The format was a self-organizing process, the schedule of the meeting was formed on the fly, and the topics were proposed by the participants themselves. Other participants were involved in the discussion of the announced topics, which made it possible to form effective, fresh, sometimes unexpected solutions. The OpenSpace format revealed similar problems for different representatives of the non-profit sector: weak involvement of local communities, insufficient communication between them and an information "vacuum", as well as general views of the sector on the topics "comfortable urban environment", "interaction between NGOs and the media", "NGOs and municipal authorities”, “education of children with special needs”.

At the same time, the participants of the master class "Website for NGOs in 2 hours" under the guidance of the director of APPOMART created websites for their organizations and projects.

During the breaks, the participants were entertained by the kind robot fundraiser Borya, who arrived at the Forum together with the team of the Oblastdobra.rf platform for raising funds for charitable projects. The Oblastdobra.rf platform is a new independent project of the Center for Support of Public Initiatives, which received state support in the form of a grant from the Governor of the Leningrad Region. The platform allows you to attract funding for charitable projects using the crowdfunding method - the funds are returned back to the sponsors if the project has not raised the required amount. During the first month of the platform"s operation, 115 people became project sponsors and have already raised more than 150,000 rubles.

The forum ended with a solemn ceremony of awarding the winners and nominees of the "Public Initiative 2017" award. The annual award for contribution to the development of the non-profit sector of the Leningrad Region "Public Initiative" in 2017 collected 35 applications in 5 categories. The guest of honor, President of the National Union of Non-Profit Organizations Alexander Aigistov, Deputy Chairman of the Public Chamber Vladimir Zhuravlev and others delivered a welcoming speech.

Vadim Sokolov, a member of the Sosnovy Bor City Citizens Association, which helps local residents improve the environment and appearance of the city, won in the Local Community Projects nomination. Special attention of experts was attracted by the project “Make the city brighter!”, which helped to improve the central square of the city in a space style. In a short time, greenery, a fountain with illumination, benches and pleasant sculptures appeared there. Now this is one of the favorite places for walks of the residents of Sosnovy Bor.

Nikodim Antoninov (Gorgon Studio) won in the Culture and Creativity nomination. Over the entire period of active social activity, the Gorgon Studio team has implemented more than 100 successful socially significant projects and actions in the field of bus stop decoration, social advertising, and street art exhibitions.

The first place in the New Wave category was taken by Mikhail Shobik from the village of Rakhya, Vsevolozhsk District. In 2016, Mikhail organized the Dream Park project on the territory of Rakhia. Representatives of the older generation, schoolchildren and even children under the guidance of their parents took part in cleaning the territory. Together, they cleaned up and put in order the territory of the park without spending a single penny of budget money.

Irina Knyazheva (Center for Women"s Initiatives) won in the "Unlimited Opportunities" nomination. In 2017, Irina Mikhailovna successfully tested the crowdfunding method and, together with the local community, raised funds for a walker for a sick disabled child Yana Shayakhmetov from the city of Tosno.

Alena Rybakova, editor-in-chief of the newspapers Uyezdnye Vesti and Gatchinka.rf, won the special nomination Civil Journalism. She has been in journalism for 13 years and has been working in the Leningrad Region since 2004. Its publications provide information support to various non-profit communities, actively cover social problems, projects and initiatives. The day ended with a celebratory buffet with a concert by a string quartet conducted by Ivan Shinkarev and the premiere of the play "Siberia" from the Theater Valley - a theater in the Artmuza cluster.

The Forum of Local Communities is a project of the Center for the Support of Public Initiatives, launched in 2016 as an accelerator platform for the non-profit sector of the Leningrad Region. For 2 years, 10 forums were held in 7 districts of the Leningrad region and more than 500 active citizens took part in the project events.

In November 2017, the project "Local Communities of the Leningrad Region" became the winner of the competition for presidential grants and will continue in 2018 with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund.