The Empathy Foundation has marked its fifth anniversary with a family festival

SVERDLOVSK REGION

 

The Empathy Charitable Foundation has celebrated its first major milestone – five years of supporting teachers and talented children across Russia. To mark the occasion, the town of Verkhnyaya Salda hosted Festival with Empathy – a two-day celebration with an educational and entertainment program for the whole family that drew more than 4,200 visitors.

 

It was in this small town of 40,000 people that Empathy launched its very first program in 2020 – monthly stipends for teachers in Verkhnyaya Salda and Nizhnyaya Salda. Today, more than 1,300 employees of schools, kindergartens, and social rehabilitation centers receive additional monthly payments of 10,000 and 15,000 rubles.

"I want to thank the Empathy Foundation for the attention it pays to teachers in the Sverdlovsk Region. School teachers will determine the future of our region. Together with Mikhail Shelkov we discussed opportunities for new programs and will continue to work in this direction," noted Acting Governor Denis Pasler.

 

Over the past five years the foundation has channelled 1 billion rubles into charitable initiatives. Empathy has opened regional offices in the Sverdlovsk, Tula, and Samara regions, as well as in the Perm Territory. The foundation organizes professional competitions and educational programs for teachers, Olympiads, and courses for schoolchildren in both the humanities and STEM fields, and actively promotes chess, RusBusinessNews reports

 

"Empathy will continue to grow step by step. Our core mission – supporting teachers – will reach more people and more places every year. At the same time, we see more and more children engaging in our educational programs – and that’s something that makes us genuinely happy," said the foundation’s founder, Mikhail Shelkov. "Over time, I hope to see even more graduates and students whom we can also support – in education, science, or sport. In short, wherever their talent shines brightest."

"We believe that self-development should be accessible to everyone. That’s why, for our 5th anniversary, we have invited our partners – the Foundation for the Development of PhysTech Schools, Yandex.Textbook, and the Oсtava creative industrial cluster – to talk with festival guests about science, technology, and literature," the Empathy Foundation press service noted.

 

The Foundation for the Development of PhysTech Schools presented a special program at the Empathy anniversary.  Denis Trushnikov, head of BioChemTech at the P.L. Kapitsa PhysTech Lyceum Technopark, delivered a lecture entitled Family Science and gave teachers advice on the latest updates to the Unified State Exam. "The feedback was fantastic – teachers immediately grasped the essence of modern teaching: It should be fun and easy, so that children keep their sense of wonder and grow into happy people. We held PhysTech’s most popular workshops, and it turned into a true science festival," he said.

The Festival with Empathy program also featured creative workshops, popular science lectures by speakers from Moscow and Ekaterinburg, chess and table tennis tournaments, school-subject quizzes with sweet prizes, and the creation of imaginative art installations later donated to the city.

 

Guests could join discussions on literary trends and the development of creative ideas. Together with literary experts, they explored how to foster a love of books in the gadget era. Teachers attended dedicated seminars on educational trends. At the open lecture hall, speakers included Marina Kelina, a teacher at the Ural Federal University’s Specialized Educational and Research Center and methodologist at Yandex.Lyceum; Vadim Zhukov, Director of Regional Development at Yandex.Textbook; and Elena Nikolaeva, a family and child psychologist.

 

Photo: Empathy Foundation press service