Just Give Good! corporate volunteer movement

The Blue Arrow, a family puppet opera based on the eponymous fairytale by Gianni Rodari was staged in 2019. Due to a special nature of the opera, the play features both professional opera singers and volunteers from the MTS puppet theater. The results proved the importance of this collaboration: MTS volunteers learn acting from professional performers through working together on stage.

The premiere at Zaryadye Concert Hall was attended by children from social care institutions. A motion-picture version of the opera for hearing-impaired people is scheduled for release in 2020. The version will be a full-fledged film that can be shown both on TV and in a movie theater.

In 2019, MTS implemented a nationwide social project Road of Life to help children from social care institutions to start living on their own.

Volunteers visited orphanages to discuss all sensible topics in detail with the kids. The children were teamed up and learned to write CVs, select proper clothes for, and present oneself in, an interview, plan personal monthly budget, and furniture one’s flat after graduation. The project was implemented in 17 regions with volunteers visiting 28 institutions and extending training to over 400 children. The project involved 180 MTS employee volunteers from different departments.

In 2019, the Company launched educational project Virtual Planetarium, a new-generation mobile cinema based on Samsung equipment and looking like big 3D glasses. The technology creates not just a 3D effect to make the picture more realistic but a complete perception of being out in space. Medsi group specialists confirmed that the mobile cinema is safe for children.

By the end of 2019, the project covered 33 regions. Educational content featured by the planetarium includes virtual-reality films on the structure of Earth and other planets of the solar system which have been viewed by 1,700 children in MTS sponsored social care institutions thanks to the efforts of more than 150 specially trained MTS employee volunteers.

Going to School with MTS, an annual nationwide educational project aimed at supporting children in social care institutions, is timed to coincide with the beginning of a school year. In 2019, the project covered more than 1,500 children in 40 regions of the Company operation. The project participants are not only MTS employees, but also their family members, our partners, as well as volunteers from MTS’s retail network, MTS Satellite TV, MGTS, and Detsky Mir Charity Fund. The volunteers visit orphanages, conduct vocational guidance and workshops, donate stationery and books, organize cultural programs, sports competitions, and simply spend time with children.

A series of new-year events Christmas Trees for Children! is held every year for children in social care institutions. The project includes educational plays featuring puppeteers from the MTS Mobile Fairytale Puppet Theater creative volunteer association, a variety of workshops on how to make Christmas souvenirs and toys, outdoor sports, quests, contests, dressing up as Santa Clauses and Snow Maidens, gifts, and a flood of vivid impressions that help make the holiday unforgettable while offering companionship to children. Over 2,500 children and 300 MTS volunteers took part in the project in 2019.

Become a Star of Financial Literacy! is another project sponsored by MTS Bank, which educates schoolchildren, university students and children from social care institutions.

In 2019, MTS Bank sponsored a number of nationwide and regional initiatives for financial education: volunteers from the bank took part in the All-Russian Financial Literacy Project carried out by the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. As part of the cooperation, MTS Bank arranged a series of offline and online events on financial literacy in a digital environment which attracted over 1.5 million people.

Also in 2019, MTS Bank continued its own educational project Financial Literacy for Everyone! which attracted about 500 children from all regions of operation. In 2019, a total of 3 million participants were involved in offline and online financial literacy activities of MTS Bank, five times more than in 2018.

Blood donation movement has been active in MTS since 2011: blood donor days are held in the Company’s offices across Russia in cooperation with local blood transfusion centers. In Moscow only, 350 MTS and MGTS donors provided over 140 liters of blood in 2019, which is equivalent to saving at least 600 lives.

MTS’s annual nationwide volunteer initiative Tango of Victory includes a number of events celebrating Victory Day. The project covers all of MTS’s regions of operation. Voluntary cleanups in city parks and lilacs planting, cleaning of memorials and military glory museum territories, concerts for veterans in cultural centers, and targeted aid – these are just a few events our volunteers organize in remembrance of the Great Victory.

Large and small memorials to heroes of the Great Patriotic War were built in practically all settlements in the country after the war, however not all monuments are currently in decent condition. The nationwide project Memory of Victory aims to preserve regional Great Patriotic War monuments and memorials to heroes and to help their restoration. Areas around monuments are tidied, painted and plastered, trees are planted, flowers are laid, and ceremonial events are organized with the involvement of the local residents. The project is run in 30 Russian regions and involves 1,500 people.

Transbaikal super marathon Around the World in Eighty Days is a project that caused 700 people living in the region to take up sports and “move around the Earth”. The participants were supposed to run 40,072 km in total, which is the largest circumference of the Earth along the equator, in 80 days. Project results in figures: 454 runners, 248 cyclists and 49 teams with 80,140 km covered.