No. 4, 2009
CREATING A DECENT FUTURE
Oil of Russia magazine talks to Natalia Zvereva, Director of the Our Future Foundation for Regional Social Programs
The work of the Our Future Foundation for Regional Social Programs, founded in 2007 by LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov, helps many people in different regions of Russia to see their own innovative ideas become reality, and to bring about positive social changes in the nation
Q: Please tell us something about how the Our Future Foundation was created.
A: The idea of creating the Foundation and its main lines of work can be attributed to Vagit Alekperov. The Our Future Foundation was founded in 2007 to implement long-term socially relevant programs and projects on the principles of social entrepreneurship. It is a private organization, financed by Mr. Alekperov. From the start, the Foundation's mission was "To act as a catalyst of positive social change in Russian society by assisting to developing of social entrepreneurship." In our opinion, one instrument for bringing about change is social entrepreneurship, which holds an intermediate position between traditional entrepreneurship and charity. Social entrepreneurship is activity that seeks to solution of social problems. A social entrepreneur recognizes these problems, finds an innovative solution and resources, and creates a long-term sustainable model. If an ordinary charitable foundation is constantly handing out money, we hand out money just once. Then the model that we and the social entrepreneur choose starts to come alive. It stands on its own and requires no further investment.
This is not, however, our sole line of work. There are three main areas in which the Foundation operates. The first is development and support of social entrepreneurship proper. The second is the development of socially-oriented commercial projects in which the Foundation itself acts as a social entrepreneur. We create a socially useful idea and implement it ourselves. The third area is traditional charity.
Q: There are a great many home-grown and foreign charitable organizations operating in Russia today. What makes your Foundation unique?
A: We are still the only ones in Russia who are involved in social entrepreneurship. There are many foundations around the world that do such work, and they are like us. The largest of these are the global Ashoka International Foundation and Switzerland's Schwaba Foundation. But one foundation is limited to issuing grants, another offers loans, and another even deals in capital. We're unique as we have decided to use all of these methods. We support social entrepreneurs with grants and loans, and we plan our own capitalization of their projects.
When we began our work, we first had a look at the experience accumulated all over the world. From our foreign colleagues, we borrowed the method of selecting and assessing projects on a competitive basis.
This year we're holding for the first time the Open social entrepreneurship projects competition in Russia, and there are certain criteria for being selected. The main criteria are how innovative the project is; how self-contained it is; and, of course, how easily it can be replicated. The project must be directed to concrete social problem solution. It should be the kind of model that can be put to use in any of Russia's regions. When we find such a model, we're solving a particular problem in full, rather than piecemeal.
We received totally 85 applications to the competition. The expert panel looks business plans of competitors, who passed to the second round, over, and then the winners would be with the formal ceremony awarded. They will become for their projects interest-free loans and, partially, grants.
Q: How big is the territory covered by the Foundation's regional social programs?
A: The territory covered by the Our Future Foundation is huge. This year, we're holding competitions for social entrepreneur projects in ten different regions: the Arkhangelsk Region, the Astrakhan Region, the Volgograd Region, the Kaliningrad Region, the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the Sverdlovsk Region, the Stavropol Territory, the Komi Republic, the Perm Territory and the Nenets Autonomous Area.
The projects we supported last year were from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rybinsk, and Tula.
According to the latest information from the competition now under way, the most active regions are the Perm Territory and the Kaliningrad Region.
Q: Does the Foundation collaborate with the LUKOIL offices in the regions where the competitions are held?
A: We have a partnership agreement with the LUKOIL Charity Foundation. Managers of LUKOIL regional enterprises helped us to inform peoples in regions about the competition. Our main task was to tell people about social entrepreneurship and to get across to them what it's all about. True, the mass media haven't been very helpful in this regard, but we think this is due to the Foundation being a fairly new organization: it's only been around for two years, and we're now holding just our first regional competition. We hope people will generally have a better understanding of what we're all about after the second competition, and that things will then be easier for us.
Q: What social entrepreneur projects have already won the Foundation's support?
A: In the last two years, we have helped implement seven social entrepreneur projects.
The first practical step the Foundation took was to support the Armor project. The one-of-a-kind Armor orthopedic system was invented and patented by Aleksey Nalogin, a handicapped person, and lets someone with an injured spine move, stand, stand up, and sit down all by himself, and to go up and down stairs with a little extra help. Armor was designed in a way that allows you to put it on and take it off all by yourself. The system also costs half as much as foreign systems of the same quality. The project was carried through and has already paid for itself, since the system is in great demand. New production is just getting under way in Perm and Volgograd.
In the future, Nalogin plans to set up his own prosthesis and orthopedic center where quality systems will be marketed in considerably greater volume, and to set up a laboratory for the introduction of promising new prototypes. Aleksey will have the Foundation's support for this project, too.
The next project that the Foundation helped launch was in a somewhat different field. This was the project in the city of Rybinsk in the Yaroslavl Region, "Woman. The Individual. Society". Its task was to provide creative and well-paid work for women from poor, multiple-child families. Home production of hand-crafted felt toys, souvenirs, and costume jewelry was set up to organize their employment. Low-income mothers with more than one child can work at home, get paid, and create interesting souvenirs with their own two hands. They're provided with tools and patterns, and there's already a marketing network. On the one hand, it's a business, on the other, it helps solve a social problem. For instance, women from 14 families in the city of Rybinsk already have learned this technology, and they have an extra income.
We had another interesting, innovative project from the charitable organization Hope, renting rehabilitation equipment for the handicapped. The Center for the Rent of Rehabilitation Equipment for the Handicapped, now open in St. Petersburg, lets us provide the handicapped and elderly with rehab equipment they need (wheelchairs, for instance) at very low prices. It takes the handicapped and elderly quite a long time to get the things they need through the government's Social Security Fund. They need them now, and at once. The outlet allows them to get what they need in just one or two days.
At the beginning of 2009, the Our Future Foundation supported three projects for Russia's National Society for the Blind. Thanks to support from the Foundation, workshops that employ the handicapped (Sunbeam and Paragon in Volgograd, and Craftsman in Syktyvkar) were able to not just keep jobs open in the middle of an economic recession but to expand their workforces, raise wages, and set up efficient mass production.
Q: Can you share the Foundation's plans for the near future?
A: The regional competition for social entrepreneurship projects is our main mechanism we work through. We plan to hold one every year and to enlarge its geography.
We've now announced a new student competition for social entrepreneur ideas at the Tyumen State Oil and Gas University. We want to involve students in this entirely new concept so that they'll come up with social projects that are relevant to their own Tyumen area. Based on the results of the competition, we'll decide if we're going to extend this initiative to other higher educational institutions around the country.
We're still working on the mechanism for an on-line competition. If a regional competition is held over a certain period at the same time every year, the on-line competition will be held the year round. The application form you need to fill out will be put on our website. Also you need to attach to your application a business plan for the project. This will be an easier and more open way of entering the competition. We're planning to make special attention to innovative part of received project. We expect that the new mechanism for entering the competition will start operating sometime around the middle of 2010.
