Norilsk Nickel regards its social responsibility as inalienable from its business and an essential part of successful activity.
That is why it views the formation of a friendly social environment, with its positive impact on businesses, as a top priority goal for corporate charity. Company programmes effectively promote the development of local communities: they improve the population’s life, establish and improve civil society institutions, and revive the values and traditions of the indigenous northern ethnic minorities. The Company helps to build infrastructure projects, sponsors education, healthcare, culture and sports programmes, and supports public environmental activism. The MMC Norilsk Nickel collective agreement for 2012-2015 (Section 11) seals its promises of charity in the region.
The updated Norilsk Nickel development strategy, endorsed in the autumn of 2013, focuses on strengthening the links between the economic and social aspects of development. The Company bases its social responsibility on social partnership, which implies joint responsibility of the state, the business community and the public in such fields as social affairs, resource development and environmental protection. The new corporate charity strategy confirms the Company’s move from traditional pinpoint donations to social investment through grant distribution. Contests help select the most deserving beneficiaries, promote trailblazing ideas, and secure easily assessed practical results as social problems are addressed.
25 million roubles
in grand funding for Our Future, Our Responsibility
Competitions the Company arranges aim to promote social projects for the social and economic progress of relevant regions, and encourage community activists and public organisations that are ready to tackle pressing local social problems. Such activity, especially where partner projects attracting local and territorial resources are concerned, pools the Company’s and the region’s efforts to provide an opportunity for ever more ambitious charity programmes that meet the formidable Information on social project competitions is available on the Company’s corporate website http://www.nornik.ru/kompaniya/ustojchivoe-razvitie/politika-upravleniya-personalom/soczialnyieprogrammyi/mir-novyix-vozmozhnostej and also in social networks (Facebook page on the NN World of New Opportunities programme)social development challenges that the host territories are facing.1
The Our Future, Our Responsibility contest took place start in Norilsk in 2013.
Its grant fund was 25 million roubles – much more than previous sponsor donations the Company had made to local offices on an annual basis. An ambitious information campaign preceding the contest included three seminars for tentative applicants and experts, and over 400 face to face and online consultations.
A total of 186 project applications in 10 nominations from 105 organisations were registered. Government and municipal offices and public organisations submitted equal numbers of applications. General educational institutions (including those of extended education) submitted more than 40 project applications and preschool institutions, 20. The 62 winning projects received funds from 200,000 to 1 million roubles. All contest winners received their grants in December 2013. The implementation of their projects will continue until October 2014.
The Innovation for the Future nomination was the most popular, with projects improving education and upbringing. There were also many winner projects in the nominations “Ready, Set, Go!” to promote sport and healthy living, and Northern Heritage to preserve ethnic minority culture and improve the improve the lives of the indigenous population.
The Company launched social project contests in the Murmansk Region two years ago, after Kola MMC introduced an effective pattern of charity donations to implement socially important projects in the towns of operation – Monchegorsk, Zapolyarny and Nickel.
In all 19 socially important projects were implemented in Monchegorsk and the Pechenga District in 2013, compared to 16 in 2012. A majority of projects that found support related to education, culture and sport.
The Taimyr Mou (Taimyr Land) project of the Dudinka municipal folk cultural centre won Norilsk Nickel’s first open grant contest. It envisages a nomad camp recreated in the town to display the teepee-like dwellings of the local peoples – Dolgan, Nganasan, Enets, Nenets and Evenk – alongside everyday northern household utensils, sleds, fishing nets and hooks, and hunters’ traps and snares. A field for folk games and a pagan sanctuary with idols, boulders and benches will be next to the camp. The project will be co-funded by Norilsk Nickel, the district administration and cultural offices, and the business community. The Dudinka folk cultural centre previously won several grants through the Social Partnership for Peace territorial programme.
The social support of retired Company workers is among the longest-established forms of Norilsk Nickel charity. The Company allocates up to 25 million roubles a year to support retired workers. There were 6,400 programme beneficiaries in 2013. Each of them receives 3,500 roubles on Company Day. The Kola MMC supports retired Company workers in the entire Kola Peninsula. It spent 6.8 million roubles for this purpose in 2013.
The Zapolyarny Branch established its Fund for Material Assistance to Pensioners ten years ago. Formed out of equal contributions from the Company and its staff, the fund helps Company employees who left the North after retirement before 2001. Its 6,000 beneficiaries who have resettled in the mainland received supplements to their pensions – 2,500 roubles every three months. Programme funding was initially 10 million roubles a year. However, the personnel who made regular donations shrank with every passing year, and average per capita payments to seniors also shrank. In 2013, the Norilsk Nickel joint social grant commission approved a new pattern for the fund. Now, every pensioner receives 2,500 roubles once a year, on Company Day. There were 5,823 beneficiaries in 2013.
Charity aid exceeding 23.5 million roubles went to 67 schools and 43 kindergartens in Norilsk and Dudinka, to 22 townships of the Taimyr Dolgan-Nenets municipal district, and to several offices in 2013. The Zapolyarny Branch helped schools and kindergartens with sports gear, office equipment, audio and video recorders, fire extinguishers and other necessities. Aid to the Taimyr municipal district aims to develop the social infrastructure – schools, kindergartens, and healthcare and cultural institutions. The Company also works to preserve the culture and traditions of indigenous northern ethnic minorities. In 2013, it helped to organise Reindeer Day and Fisherman Day celebrations and supplied prizes and valuable gifts to contestants in ethnic sports.
The long-established Do Good charity action had both financial and organisational support from the Company in 2013. Its 500 beneficiaries from the Norilsk orphanage, the Norilsk boarding school for mentally retarded children, Boarding School No. 2 and the Victoria centre engage in volunteer assistance to lone seniors, children with limited abilities who cannot communicate with their peers, and others with social issues. Action spending totalled 600,000 roubles in 2013.