Позитивные изменения. Том 2, №4 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 4 (2022)

The Positive Changes Journal is launching a new column, People of Impact. In this column, we will share inspiring stories of the people who managed to achieve substantial changes in their communities, regions, and even countries. The first guest of the new column is Roman Aranin, CEO of Observer, a company producing and repairing rehabilitation equipment for the disabled. We talk to him about ways to create a social model of understanding disability, why an entrepreneur needs positive thinking, and how to do things in Russia that have never happened.

Roman Aranin

Yulia Vyatkina

Editor, Positive Changes Journal

How would you define the impact of your company, the Observer?

We have created a new social model, where people with disabilities themselves determine what they need and what it should look like.

For the region in general, this turned out a very beautiful project. An enterprise appears that is run by a wheelchair user, and where 25 % of the employees are wheelchair users, and what they do is not bending staples all day long, but operate assembly lines, welding robots, or milling machines. That is, we show that with a properly adapted environment, a person with disability can do absolutely the same work as a person without a disability.

Our social model is about giving people a job, rehabilitation, assisted living. We create all this ourselves, and the state receives service in its purest form. Roughly speaking, if the government built the same thing, it would probably take five years and cost 150–200 million rubles. Meanwhile, we did it all with our own money. Ten assisted living cottages cost about 35 million rubles, the rehabilitation center another 50 million. That is, we did it in a year and a little less than 100 million.

How did you get to all these results?

What periods can be distinguished in your company's development?

The road was long enough. We started making wheelchairs in 2009. Four years later, we set up a public organization called the Ark, and we started employing people with disabilities — two or three people at a time. First to the wheelchair repair shops, then to the resource center that worked on creating an accessible environment, then to the beaches, etc.

Eventually we felt the need to do something more serious, because someone's wives, someone's mothers kept coming to us, asking for help: "Hire, hire him” and we just didn't have any place left to hire people. And then we made up our mind to build a factory. However, we immediately ran into the problem that many key employees did not have housing, some lived on the other side of town. For starters, we built cottages for three of our employees, and then we thought we would also need a building for the rehabilitation center.

So we went on with the assisted living idea. That is, we would pull a man out of his family, someone who had never lived on his own. For example, a young man who got disabled at 16, lives on a fifth-floor in an apartment building and never goes out. We would move him to our cottage and teach him to live independently, so that he could cook for himself, wash himself, etc. Eventually, we would start full-on rehabilitation, with physical therapy and electrotherapy.

What helped you achieve these results?

What factors contributed to this?

First of all, we weren't afraid to set the bar high. Because if you set the bar at 30 cm, that's as high as you're going to jump. If you set it at two meters, you start looking for a pole to jump with, etc. We set the bar high right from the start.

Second, team play. I have a real professional team — competent people I can confidently delegate things to, without whom I wouldn't be able to do anything.

And the third point is cross-sector interaction, when you can approach the authorities and say: “Look, it just so happens that we're more in the loop than you are. Let's go there together and solve this problem together.”

We weren't afraid to set the bar high. Also I have a professional team — competent people I can confidently delegate things to, without whom I wouldn't be able to do anything.

Three or four years ago, the governor of Kaliningrad Region stood with me in the field where the Observer factory is now. I was explaining to him why this was the right spot to build. When foreign guests come to Russia and particularly to Kaliningrad Region, they will get their first impression of the country, starting with a green English lawn and a futuristic factory. He understood this and felt a sense of belonging.