Alena Popova. Human capital and gender equality in Russia

I believe that most things that people do, what kind of purposes they set up in life depend on a family we’re coming from, what attitudes and beliefs we share with each other. Probably that’s why starting from my childhood I’ve learnt that there is no point in being a selfish person, the best thing we could do is to share, help others. My father and its lifestyle and attitudes gave me a great example. Despite my dad was a common builder, he used to devote lots of time to charity work: developed  hippotherapy in my native town (Ekaterinburg), deliberately gathered information about this and voluntarily attempted to put this therapy into practice. My dad and I used to visit retired people, give them presents when I was at school. At that time I realized that such help didn’t lead to anything positive in the long-term perspective. What will happen? What will change after your visit?…what’s then?  I’m sure if you want to help others you should do it on a long-term basis, constantly interacting with people who need your help, providing them with extra opportunities, otherwise it won’t work out.

People usually get confused when I’m talking about charity and social practices. Charity in my understanding is directed on such actions that solve only one problem, whereas social entrepreneurship gathers all projects and practices together that further could be carried out in different cities.  People think of charity as a difficult and mawky issue to deal with or if they deal they prefer to make one-off donations and forget about these social issues. Together with Anastasia Severina we’re considering another approach, trying to dwell on those problems that actually our government should solve. We’ve decided to make a social project that looks toward gathering , replicating all practices of social entrepreneurship and finally, finding investors for these projects. In simple English under these projects we’ll create workplaces for handicapped, retired people; we’ll help orphaned children to become self-employment and financially independent in the future.

One of the biggest things I was dreaming of was to organize a large charity fund that would be supported by large companies’ donations and all people would be happy and cheerful. Now I know that it won’t work out this way that’s why I’ve set up a new goal – to develop social entrepreneurship in Russia. I wish that in a global prospect that could encourage more and more people to be active and make a difference. As we all create our futures I believe that it’s time for each of us – socially responsible people – to take an action. And that’s good to know that everyone could make a difference and contribution. Just do it!!!