Being a volunteer is trendy! RUDN University awards the best volunteers of the year
Volunteers from 85 countries organize more than a hundred events every year. In 2023, RUDN volunteer movement united 3,200 participants. They visited orphanages, participated in events to distribute St. George ribbons, donated blood as donors, and took care of the environment and homeless animals.
The winners:
- Grand Prix of the competition in the “Volunteer of the Year” category — Arnus Mayas from Syria, Institute of Medicine;
- “Event volunteer” — Guetanis Kristan Rustich Stephen from Congo, Faculty of Philology;
- “Social volunteer” — Ogulnur Orazgeldieva from Turkmenistan, Faculty of Science;
- “Patriotic Volunteer” — Ivan Nikitin, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences;
- “Medical Volunteer” — Anastasia Bogoyavlenskaya, Institute of Medicine;
- “Volunteer-ecologist” — Evgeniy Khityaev, postgraduate student at the Engineering Academy.
“I started volunteering 10 years ago when I was in high school. My first activity back then was cleaning up the school playground. I never tried to understand why I decided to volunteer. I guess, it was my inner calling. I felt energized by other people’s smiles.
Over 10 years of volunteering, I realized that our lives become simpler and happier when we help others and try to make them happy, without expecting anything in return. And this principle is not only about volunteering, but about our whole lives,” Arnus Mayas from Syria, a student at the Institute of Medicine (“General Medicine”, VI year).
“This award is very important for me, because my volunteer work began with a social project. A little over a year ago, I applied to participate in University sessions, where I met wonderful children and gained new experience, as well as a lot of positive emotions,” — Ogulnur Orazgeldieva from Turkmenistan, Faculty of Science (“Applied Informatics”, IV year).
“For the second year in a row I have been taking part in the ‘RUDN University Volunteer of the Year’ contest in the ‘Best Environmental Volunteer’ category and for the second time I have won. This became possible thanks to the Potanin Foundation scholarship. Once a year, the Foundation’s organizes a Summer School for scholarship holders in the format of volunteer camps on the territory of Russian nature reserves, wildlife sanctuaries and national parks.
We visited the Altai Biosphere Reserve and the Kenozersky National Park. We were faced with many tasks: clearing the area of debris, clearing cordons from overgrowth, preparing sites for exhibitions, cleaning observation platforms, clearing unique apple orchards of dried trees, and so on.
It is extremely interesting to participate in such volunteer projects, especially when there are people with the same active lifestyle around. As a bonus, this gives you an opportunity to participate in competitions such as ‘RUDN University Volunteer of the Year,’ the victory in which serves, rather, as motivation for other people and shows that volunteering is cool, interesting and useful!” — Evgeniy Khityaev, postgraduate student at the Engineering Academy.
Edited by Anastasia Zhuravleva, student of the Faculty of Philology (“Journalism”, IV year).
On a Sunday winter day at the exhibition named “Russia” RUDN University gathered students, partners, colleagues, and organized lectures under the title “We are different! We are equal! We are together!” The event took place in Pavilion 57 on the platform of the Russian Society “Znanie”. And on this day the hall was jam-packed.
The event was attended by more than 350 students from Russia, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The students organized an exhibition of the fraternity, introducing the guests to national dances, treating them to Algerian coffee, Arabic sweets and talked about the culture and history of the people of the country. The week ended with a futsal tournament.
On the eve of the New Year, we are summing up the past 365 days and set new goals for the next year. Whatever we do — study, work or do research — we intend to conquer even higher peaks.