Kaliningrad Hosts Youth for Sustainable Future Session

A practical session, entitled Youth for Sustainable Future, was held in the Western branch of RANEPA on 27 May. It was organized by ACIG Group of Companies and RANEPA. The activities of the Sustainable Future of Russia platform for young professionals were presented to its participants and a workshop in psychology of organizational effectiveness was held.

This Kaliningrad session was part of Zaslavskaya Symposium, one of the major events in the field of economics and social studies. Sociology, demography, development of the society and economy were discussed at the practical session, too. Aleksey Shipov, Member of the Board of ACIG and Managing Director of the Sustainable Future of Russia platform, addressed the audience first. He talked about all resources and opportunities for the platform participants as well as success stories of the projects started by young people who had been involved in its activities. This year, the platform works on four topics, and each of them reflects some of the most critical issues of development of the country and its member regions, namely, development of the Crimean Federal district, independent estimation of the social security system, PR for territories, and shaping the sustainable consumption culture.

Platform experts who participated in the session talked about some of the topics in detail. Dmitry Mikhaylov, Director for Marketing at ACIG, explained regional branding, a contemporary dimension for development and investment generation. Tatyana Maleva, Director of RANEPA Institute of Social Analysis, described the existing situation in the society and demography. “In the last three months, we have lost the salary gain that we had achieved in the last six years. Orders on increasing salaries are infeasible. Salaries cannot be increased. They can only be earned,” she said. Based on what she explained, it becomes clear that the labor pool in the country is shrinking, which is vividly indicated by relevant statistics. “Ideal sex-and-age pyramid resembles a cypress, and the Russian one looks like a low wide-branching fir,” she said.

However, active young people from Kaliningrad in the audience are enthusiastic about the future of their region and eager to play an important role in it. They consider acquiring knowledge and skills one of the key components for building their future career. Mr. Shipov held a workshop for psychology of organizational effectiveness where they got an opportunity to gain such knowledge. Its participants reviewed various situations that any team faces in its work, case studies from some companies, thus learning different approaches to modernization of a team setup, types of corporate culture, fine points of relations between superiors and their subordinates.

“This will surely be of use for these young people in future when they become members of a company as subordinate professionals or superiors as they start their career. Keen understanding of cooperation inside a team is a powerful tool in the hands of an individual who wants to achieve positive change in his or her company or project team,” Mr. Shipov said.

Official website of the platform: www.future-rf.ru