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.

“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).