Kruzhok
"Kruzhok" ('the Circle' in russian) was a non-profit organization and community of education enthusiasts. We specialized in organizing short-term educational programs for teenagers in various contemporary professional fields. These programs were typically conducted in small towns and villages where access to modern supplementary education is limited. During each program, students worked on projects that often received widespread media coverage.
We initiated this project in 2017 with a team of four coding instructors, each of us having developed unique curriculum in various IT domains. Our goal was to test the hypothesis of the demand for modern technological education in small towns and villages. To achieve this, we set out to visit ten locations within a year and conduct short-term coding schools. We successfully accomplished this goal. Along the way, we realized that coding is merely a catalyst for engaging in meaningful dialogues with teenagers. It became evident that showcasing an exciting teaching approach and an inspiring educator were far more significant.
During 2017-2018, we witnessed the emergence of seven websites created by teenagers from different regions. These websites feature heartfelt stories of teenagers' hometowns — small towns and villages. These sincere projects provide a unique perspective, allowing young inhabitants to share their experiences of their localities rather than merely presenting articles found on Wikipedia.
Throughout our journeys, we also continuously produced short films depicting life in various regions. These films and media projects garnered attention from the media, bringing recognition to our initiative and inspiring others to engage in activities that foster regional development.
During one of our trips to the village of Sardayal in the Republic of Mari El, Polina Vladimirovna, a local schoolteacher, shared her greatest dream with us — to do something that would bring recognition to Sardayal, to let the world know that this place exists. Her words deeply inspired us. As a result, we organized a grand cultural and music festival in the village, which attracted over 300 people from major cities. The festival featured various workshops, and the headline act was the popular Russian band "Samoe Bol'shoe Prostoe Chislo" ('The Largest Prime Number' in russian).
After the first series of trips, we changed our approach to creating temporary schools. We realized that the subject area is just an excuse for honest dialogue and joint work with teenagers. Therefore, from 2018 to 2021, we organized schools for completely different disciplines. These were not only web-development schools, but also music, architecture, journalism, media schools, and even football camps. We attracted talented people who had achieved recognized heights in their field as teachers, developed a curriculum with them, prepared a trip to the region, and went there. As a result of each such trip, a cool project was created, which received wide coverage in the media. Thus, the album created at the music school hit the top positions in the streaming charts in our region, the newspaper from the journalism school was available in all fancy places of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Each time we created something together that teenagers and regions could be proud of.
Our activities sometimes caused significant and unexpected side effects. In one of the regions, the local administration installed internet after seeing information about the problem on our website. In another, they built a new school because we published a story about how dilapidated the current one was. Yet another school found its sponsor thanks to our informational support. Such events invariably delighted us and motivated us to continue.
In 2021, the most popular Russian blogger Yuri Dud made an episode about our project. This opened new opportunities for our project. For instance, we were approached by the team from Adidas, who offered us to become the face of their project to construct 6 football fields in the regions of Russia. And we built them together. Football greatly transforms the life of a small town or village. It was very pleasant to participate in this. In addition to this, together with Adidas, we released a line of clothing with branded prints from our project.
Another successful collaboration with a commercial brand — the grant competition "Pass the Ball" from Tinkoff Bank. The guys from the bank were inspired by our activities and established a grant and invited us to be the face of this grant. Anyone could submit an application and propose a project to create something that would strengthen social ties in their region and improve life. We selected the winners from numerous applications, and the bank sponsored such projects. This grant competition was launched twice. Thanks to it, thirty five projects to improve life in the regions have been implemented.
In 2022, Russia began a war with Ukraine. The core team left Russia as a form of protest. But between 2022-2023, we helped organize 10 field schools for teams that remained in Russia. Arranging educational trips in a warring country turned out to be a very complex emotional and professional challenge. Therefore, in 2023 we decided to shut down the project. The last project of our team was not about Russia. It was about Israel. We held our classic website creation school for teenage wartime repatriates in Tel Aviv. This website collects stories about adaptation, pain, and hopes of teenagers.