1000 years back

I have just come back from a trip to Velikij Novgorod, which is the city on the north of Russia that has a history of more than 1000 years. We went there with Sveta, a friend of mine.

It’s even difficult to imagine – 1000 years! Yet, many historical monuments are still on this land, although were badly destroyed by wars.

You may read about the city in web: www.novgorod.ru/english while I will put some pictures that we did there and my personal impressions about the trip.

Impression 1 – Kremlin, cultural center of the city and a good place for rest in piece and silence.

Impression 2 – Cotton hare. Surprisingly, we came to Novgorod in its birthday, so took part in the celebration that impressed us a lot! The event was organized in such an interesting way that everybody could get involved in different activities: painting, weaving, sewing, dancing!

As for us, we learned to make cotton hares :-)

Impression 3 – Monastery life. There are a lot of churches and monasteries in Novgorod. Wherever you go, you will find them on your way. It’s strange and frustrating how some of them are surrounded by cafes, clubs, beaches etc. without any respect to monks. Yet these are just exceptions. And there is the one which impressed us the most, because of its blinding beauty and spiritual silence…

We heard the story about novices (“послушники”) who have to obey all requests of a parson (“батюшка”). No words back, no complaints, if you are told to do something you are to go it. Are we able to live this kind of life?

And this is an old church destroyed during Warld War II, now a home for some Novgorod citizens...

Impression 4 – House of Dostoevsky in Staraya Russa (town in Novgorod region). Fedor Dostoevsky is the famous Russian writer, we saw his small house where he lived with his family.

Impression 5 – Weird things. Some of them are funny, some are frustrating, the others are completely senseless. One of them is just STRANGE… like this drama theatre… :)

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Thank you, my dear, for such a pleasant trip!

Corporate Responsibility

2 weeks ago I attended a round table devoted to Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR (organized by AIESEC in Moscow).

CSR is one the areas I am passionate about, so I was extremely glad to participate in the mentioned event.

In order to keep the key learning points that I go out of discussions, I am posting them to this blog.

Some of them might be seen as obvious; however, it was important for me to clearly understand basic things, although I read books about CSR before.

First presentation got us into the topic and underlined 3 main challenges of CSR in Russia:

* not developed reporting system for CSR activities
* CSR is not a part of the general strategy of the company
* CSR is still perceived as a charity activities, although it includes 2 additional aspects

Eugeny Tutkevich, top manager of MDM-bank, pointed out another interesting question, and instead of talking about importance of CSR for companies, gave 5 reasons why companies should not do CSR:

* CSR is not the first priority for the company as it aims on making profit
* Companies pay lots of taxes, so it’s the job of government to do social work
* Charity attracts attention of government
* The more you give, the more people will ask you for
* “If I am asked to sponsor road building, why should I give the money if a road will be built anyway?”

Conclusion: company that doesn’t do CSR activities has far more benefits than the one who does!

So WHY CSR in this case? Because of 2 main reasons:

* Sustainable development: operating at present times company creates sustainable future for itself
* Stakeholders

Then, there are 3 aspects/levels of CSR in a company:

I – stakeholders (company acts in sustainable manner with its stakeholders, e.g. ethic way of doing business)
II – personnel (programmes for employees: corporate culture, motivation, rewards & recognition, promotion within company)
III – regional community where company operates (e.g. environmental programmes)

Another interesting point that caught my attention is that company should have such CSR policy that reflects its core work.

After introduction several companies shared their examples of CSR policies:
- bank declines credit interest rate for some groups of people e.g. young married couple with children;
- educational projects about healthy food of food company
- building a computer club for school children (example of IT company) or scientific institute (FMCG company)
- “green products”: TV set that consumes less energy, much higher lifetime reliability etc.
- providing opportunity for disabled young people to do internship in a company
- free professional education for employees
- developing pension system for a city for free

The concept of sustainable development for a company is based on the idea that it helps society which will consume company’s products in the future. As in the example of education of healthy lifestyle: company increases amount of healthy people, thus ‘create’ healthy society. Many companies focus on a help for children, because this is children who are future society!

And, the last point that was mentioned: it is government that should show to business what areas to focus on.

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I really feel like reading more and more about the topic, besides will be certainly looking for CSR internship at one point of time!