The second season of the Gazprom Neft “Your Town in Your Own Hands” “Project Laboratory” has been launched in the city of Omsk. Managed under the Gazprom Neft “Home Towns” corporate social responsibility (CSR) project since 2015, the core objective of this initiative lies in training civic activists in the project management of locally important neighbourhood enhancement initiatives. It will, this year, again be curated by the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design.
The project is scheduled to run for six months. The first educational module will involve specialists in urban planning and sustainable development in neighbourhood enhancement projects taking lectures, seminars and online courses on the theory and practice of community initiatives — after which participants will develop and implement their own micro-projects. Activists have this year chosen the ‘gorodok Neftyanikov’ — one of the most significant neighbourhoods of Omsk — for the practical implementation of their skills.
Building on the experience they gain, participants will be able to develop new initiatives and submit these for review under the Home Towns grant programme, held every year in Omsk and other cities and regions in which Gazprom Neft operates.
Alexander Dybal, Member of the Management Board, Gazprom Neft, commented: “In implementing the Home Towns programme we are striving to genuinely improve quality of life in those regions in which Gazprom Neft has a presence. So partnering with local residents is, for us, a major resource. The ‘Your Towns in Your Own Hands’ initiative was designed to offer a means of engaging people in the process of achieving positive change in the local environment, but — on the basis of the first season — we can see that the project has far greater potential than that. The ‘Project Laboratory’ format means we can develop a civic community and, working together, implement high-level initiatives of most immediate need to Omsk.”
The Gazprom Neft “Home Towns” project brings together the company’s various CSR initiatives and projects throughout those regions in which the company has a presence. Directed at improving living standards in these regions, the programme includes initiatives for neighbourhood enhancement, and for the development of children’s and public sports facilities, as well as programmes in education, health, and in preserving and supporting the culture of the indigenous populations of the Russian Far North.
