Three students of RUDN Medical Institute awarded medals of the President of the Russian Federation

Engines in cars and coordinators in the work of medical volunteers

After hard 2.5 months’ long work, I feel proud. For all students who have been helping fight the pandemic. Everyone did their best and our work was highly appreciated — together with the students of the Medical Institute, Maria Mamontova and Anastasia Brailovskaya I was awarded the President’s medal “For selfless contribution to the organization of the All-Russian Mutual Assistance Campaign #WeAreTogether” on Red Square.

But even more than being happy about the reward, I am happy that the virus is going away. I have many elderly relatives, and now I finally feel better — the most difficult time is already behind.

I am studying to be a dentist and plan to work in this area in the future. The current situation tested me as an organizer. For 2 months I coordinated volunteers at the Herzen Research Institute of Radiology and Blokhin Cancer Center. The work is far from heroic but always necessary. I had to draw up a lot of documents, communicate with a lot with people. I had to try on the role of a psychologist, because in stressful situations the human factor sometimes works against you. There have been cases when at the last moment you find out that a volunteer cannot come to work, you have to urgently look for a replacement.

I didn’t feel scared on my first day of work thinking no matter how difficult the task was it could be done. Of course, the first day was the most difficult, I had to sit in the office until night, but I wanted to do everything as best as I could so as not to let the team down.

Thanks to my work as a volunteer coordinator, I improved my communication and organization skills, and I learned to trust. When every day you spend many hours side by side with people, you begin to open up to them, share problems, and look for ways out of difficult situations. I remember everyone I worked with. This is definitely not my last volunteer experience.