Social challenge and reasons for project’s initiation

Immediacy of the social problem

Up to 50% of the people living in any city may belong to a disadvantaged category (disabled people and their families, families with little children, families with three or more children, retired people, etc.). Simultaneously, they may be members of various associations. Yet, as a rule, these associations are isolated from the rest of society, and when a joint effort is required from the community, they are unable to unite the people to improve their lives.

External reasons for project’s initiation

Vyacheslav Glazychev, one of the world’s leading urban planners, wrote, “For a city to develop, you need a space where the authorities, businesses and residents can work together to keep up the positive impressions of the environment and general tolerance between people.” Community centers, special places where people have equal access to discuss problems and solutions, mey become such a space. They first appeared at the turn of the 19th century and became an indispensable part of the city landscape and urban lifestyle in many countries. Such centers provide non-financial and partially financial support to projects proposed by local people, such as:

• weekend tours by volunteer guides
• presentations and master classes on how to optimize your housekeeping or how to monetize your hobby
• sharing expertise on urban gardening, landscaping, etc.

Internal reasons for project’s initiation

Creating economic opportunities for disadvantaged categories of people and sustainable development of cities in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals is one of Citi’s priorities in its social projects. In order to develop the city’s economy on the one hand and increase each citizen’s economic activity on the other by creating an environment that would be conducive to entrepreneurship, it is important to address the problem of poverty and get every person engaged in economic operation to improve their lives. The program is implemented by promoting self-employment, motivating people to start their own business, cooperating with small and medium-sized businesses.

Coverage

• Moscow
• NGO resource centers throughout Russia
• Neighborhood centers, territorial self-government bodies, public spaces in 12 provinces of Russia

Project description

The Cities of the Future program establishes neighborhood centers open to all the urban stakeholders based on existing municipal infrastructure, active NGOs and social businesses.

While the trajectory of a specific project is to be determined by the local people themselves, the ultimate goal is to create an urban environment that would be comfortable for living, to create conditions for employment and dealing with poverty, to promote social enterprise and microbusinesses among the local people and local urban communities.

Stage 1 (implemented) – infrastructure support in creating neighborhood centers

• Research and identify existing neighborhood centers in Moscow
• Organize a contest for supporting neighborhood centers in Moscow, assist community managers
• Publish the guidebook (“How to Open a Neighborhood Center”)
• Help neighborhood centers in Moscow to communicate with each other and share best practices
• Launch a pilot neighborhood center in one of Moscow’s boroughs

Stage 2 (implemented) – launch and roll out the Self-Employment School model through neighborhood centers to get local people involved in economic activities

• The Self-Employment Schools opens at a neighborhood center with support provided for 2018-2019
• A model for Self-Employment Schools at neighborhood centers is designed
• Partnerships are formed with municipal bodies and local productions (e.g., My Career)

Stage 3 (implemented) – equip neighborhood centers with new technological services: center management websites, a mobile app, a marketplace, a video platform

• Sosedi.app, an online platform for neighborhood centers in Russia, is created
• A mobile app is created for managing a neighborhood center
• Sosedi.market, a marketplace for goods and services offered by participants and residents of neighborhood centers, opens
• Sosedi TV, a YouTube channel about neighborhood centers and neighborliness, opens

Stage 4 (to be completed in November 2019) – expertise and techniques for opening neighborhood centers are shared with activists throughout Russia

• The second edition of “How to Open a Neighborhood Center”
• A documentary about neighborhood centers and neighborliness is filmed and aired on OTR, Kultura, Zvezda and M24
• The first International Neighborhood Center Forum
• Joint neighborhood center development programs with local developers, municipal bodies and urban communities (the first partnership is a network of community centers located at ADG movie theaters)

Support projects

Every stage of the program involves local authorities and members of the local community. Consequently, the results of the Cities of the Future program were presented to Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, Labor Minister Maksim Topilin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin at the opening ceremony of the My Career center. My Career has signed a partnership agreement with Cities of the Future to promote self-employment and social entrepreneurs. The launch of the Self-Employment School at My Career in 2020 is currently under discussion.

The program offers short-term visits and internships for activists from other parts of Russia planning to open their own neighborhood center.

The program uses social media, YouTube, live streams, billboards and the word of mouth to circulate information among local communities.

Also, the program gives at least 30 presentations a year at conferences and forums for social NGOs, communities and urban planners.

Team and partners 

Team

Vladimir Vainer, the person who came up with the idea of the program, director of the Gladway Foundation, member of the International Association for Community Development (IACD)

Natalya Gladkikh, the academic director of the program, MA in Counseling (Manchester University), associate professor at the Moscow University of Psychology and Education, fellow at Lomonosov University’s Psychology Department

Marina Mikhailova, the logistics coordinator of the program, director of the Garant Social Techniques Center

Yelena Belinskaya and Yelena Tyshchuk, local residents operating as neighborhood center community managers

Partners

• Government bodies

The Cities of the Future program helps find common interests and goals with all levels of government.

For example, in 2017, the program proposed creating a working group on future professions within the Public Council of the Ministry of Construction and Utilities. The list of future professions includes community center managers, community fund specialists, etc. As a result, in 2017 the working group published and presented to the Council a guidebook on professions of the future for the Ministry of Construction.

As an extension of the Cities of the Future program, a national Advertisement of the Future contest was established jointly with the Ministry of Economic Development. The contest includes materials about the program.

Jointly with the Moscow Youth Job Center, we help a neighborhood center contest in 2017. The Self-Employment School model was discussed and introduced into the flagship My Career center in 2018-2019. Since the My Career center opened at 1 Sergi Radonezhsky Street in the summer of 2019, over 10 meetings of the School have taken place.

Deputy speaker of the State Duma Olga Yepifanova will attend the first Neighborhood Center Forum and give an opening address.

The experience gained by the Cities of the Future program in Moscow is actively applied in dozens of Russia’s provinces – Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Trans-Baikal, Khabarovsk, Sakha-Yakutia, Tyumen, Khanty-Mansi, etc.

OTR (the Public Television of Russia) has aired a film about community centers and the Cities of the Future program.

• NGOs

Our most active partners are social NGOs. The Gladway Foundation and Blagosfera are our leading partners in implementing the program.

Cities of the Future works with dozens of social NGOs in Moscow, using neighborhood centers and our partners’ resources to hold volunteer meetings, educational programs, discussions, rehearsal, seminars and conferences.

The educational program of the Russian Jewish Congress also relies on Cities of the Future experience and resources.

Coordination with the national Living Cities initiative for a number of major national events was another partnership highlight.

The Cities of the Future program has become an area of operation for NGOs throughout the country, from the Garant Center in Arkhangelsk to the Siberian Social Initiative Center, from the Tyumen Development Foundation to resource centers in Blagoveshchensk, Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. The Novosibirsk initiative to create a network of 12 neighborhood centers (using Sosedi.app) has been supported by the presidential Grant Foundation.

• Other partners

Of course, the Cities of the Future program promotes the ideas of local economy and neighborliness for construction and development companies in Moscow, Tyumen, Izhevsk, Saint Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk and other Russian cities. In October 2019, we launched a neighborhood initiative contest and the Self-Employment School classes in Moscow together with a development company. Currently, the contest covers two districts in Moscow but we plan to expand it to 40 districts.

Our program’s experience is used as study material by the Higher School of Economics, the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, and the Moscow University of Psychology and Education.

Resources

Financial resources

The 2018 budget: 6 million rubles.

Human resources

Almost all the major activities under the project – mutual education programs at the Self-Employment School, workshops and master classes, neighborly events, etc. – are organized by volunteers. This is one of the program’s key ideas: providing people with a nearby space helps them to get involved in local social and economic activities, create joint projects, plan joint projects for consumption, use, purchase, education, etc.

Over 3,000 people have joined various events in neighborhood centers as volunteers since the beginning of the program.

Technological and material resources

Stage 3 implied equipping neighborhood centers with new technological solutions: websites, a mobile app, a marketplace and a video platform.

As a result, we have:

• Sosedi.app, an online platform for neighborhood centers in Russia
• A mobile app for managing a neighborhood center
• Sosedi.market, a display of goods and services offered by neighborhood center residents
• Sosedi TV, a YouTube channel about neighborhood centers and neighborliness

Achieved results

Immediate results

The aggregate coverage of all of the program’s activities in 2018 and 2019 exceeded 1 million people.

The Neighborhood Center Management Platform was used to register over 20 centers in 10 of Russia’s provinces.

Social results

The main evaluation strategy is to record the changes happening in the lives of the target audience and communities in general. We can confidently say that having an open and friendly space in a neighborhood attracts the more active citizens in three months and achieves recognition at the level of independent recommendations on social media in six months. A pool of local residents (the core) emerges. They consider the space as their own asset and convey this kind of attitude to other residents.

As a spontaneous, organic result, we saw dozens of initiatives proposed by local residents, which later adopted the format and model of the Self-Employment Academy, where people teach each other how to monetize their hobbies and start their own business.

We were able to record direct results of changes because we included in the event registration form questions about the participant’s self-assessed status (unemployed, looking for a job, self-employed, businessman). We saw that participants (when registering again) indicated an increased level of economic activity. They also offered a positive response to the question on whether they were prepared to start their own class on employment and share their experience with neighbors.

Since 2016, the Cities of the Future program has made it its primary goal to develop a whole ecosystem for self-employed people, small and micro businesses, by sharing best and effective practices through neighborhood centers. The program improves the quality of life, especially for low-income people, which is in line with the mission of the Citi Foundation.

The program’s experience attracts the attention not only of socially oriented NGOs and communities but even local government bodies and developers. We have printed the second edition of our guidelines on neighborhood and community centers. An independent studio has made a documentary about the program, which will air on OTR. The first International Forum of Neighborhood Centers will take place in Moscow in the fall of 2019.

Internal project assessment

We use all forms of evaluation: predictive (impact assessment), monitoring, and final review. Once the project is completed, we plan to perform final impact evaluation. Evaluation is performed by project managers, program directors and outside experts.

As part of the monitoring process, we collect feedback forms from participants after events and monitor our indicators on a monthly basis, discussing them with the project team. We also collect feedback from our partners and meet with them to discuss necessary adjustments.

External project assessment

We have plans to perform external evaluation with specialists from the Association for Specialists in Program and Policy Evaluation and the Higher School of Economics (Artyom Shadrin’s Social and Economic Development Institute).

Project’s distinctive features and know – how

During the initial period, late in 2016 and early in 2017, the program experimented with grants for neighborhood centers, yet later on, in 2017-2019, it became clear that from time to time neighborhood centers required funds for ad hoc expenses (e.g., purchasing equipment for a local tour or printing a community map showing points of interest). What proved effective is providing scholarships for the local people to take classes in local coworking spaces: woodworking, sewing, etc., and offering “grants” for other educational programs that are available at a cost. Another popular and effective support mechanism was compensating local artisans for the materials used in master classes and self-employment courses. Of course, the primary support mechanism is providing an equipped environment at the community center free of charge for social and economic community events.

Challenges and solutions

The program has successfully dealt with a few challenges:

1. Linguistic issues: Initially, we borrowed the English term “community center,” which people did not like because it sounded foreign, so we had to come up with a Russian equivalent – sosedsky tsentr (neighborhood center), and we immediately saw how people’s attitude changed.
2. Logistical issues: a space intended for regular meetings between local people has to stay open all the time (while the center does not have any full-time staff). This problem was solved by making a booking service available through the website and the app and installing a digital lock.
3. Frequent meetings mean extra costs for maintenance (cleaning, disposable tableware, furniture, etc.). This was solved through sharing practices, where residents and organizers contribute to maintaining the center. These and other solutions are included in our guidebook, “How to Open a Neighborhood Center,” and in the Self-Employment School model.

Plans of further development   

The Cities of the Future program plans to continue developing services for the local economy and self-employment, knowledge sharing and pooling resources to fight poverty and help people launch social projects, social enterprises and micro businesses.

The emphasis will be on sharing expertise of successful neighborhood centers, including a study of international experience in this area (Europe, America, Asia and Australia).

We will also continue to improve the efficiency of our online solutions: the Android app, new services (the project in Novosibirsk), offline exhibits of Sosedi.market with brand shops around the city.

In Moscow, we have launched the first pilot contest of neighborhood initiatives for the local people in certain communities (together with developers), and we are expanding our Self-Employment School network (together with the Moscow authorities).

Recommendations

Cities of the Future has demonstrated a few key principles for developing cities’ sustainability and promoting their residents’ economic activities. Each individual event and the program as a whole should focus on people. Powers and responsibilities should be delegated to community members as much as possible. They are the ones who should define programs, organize, promote and build trust. These two principles inform all the other approaches and techniques in building urban communities.