Позитивные изменения. Том 3, № 3 (2023). Positive changes. Volume 3, Issue 3 (2023)

Furthermore, we have been actively involved in organizing mass events, including The 21st Century Skills career guidance games for schoolchildren, game development quizzes, robot soccer competitions at city celebrations, and highly informative tours to various enterprises. Over the course of one year, our team successfully set up 56 events, collectively impacting and enriching the lives of over 500 children. Some of these events were executed as part of grant projects, while others were introduced solely to present novel and beneficial activities for the kids in our club and the wider Murom community.

SOCIAL EFFECTS ACHIEVED IN 2022

Probably the best way to talk about the social effects of our operations is through the beneficiaries’ stories:[166]

1. Sergey’s mother, a prominent doctor in our town, sought our assistance in evaluating her son’s abilities. She noticed that Sergey would spend his days at his computer, writing programs instead of playing games. Since Sergey’s family was comprised entirely of biologists, his mother was unsure if he had a talent for programming. Thus, we embarked on a deep and productive journey with one of our most gifted students.

Sergey is a reserved child who has difficulty connecting with others. By working closely with his mother, we successfully navigated the child through his teenage crisis, during which he considered quitting programming altogether, and helped him apply for the school Olympics. Many evenings were spent talking with his mother about the challenges he faced in other interest groups, which he would withdraw from after a few months. Our approach involved refraining from any pressure and gradually guiding him towards functional programming and then into object-oriented programming classes.

After 18 months of personalized lessons, Sergey received an invitation to study at a prestigious private physics and mathematics school in Moscow as a successful participant in the All-Russian Programming Olympics. Even after the move, his mother still contacts us from time to time, asking to keep a spot in our schedule for Sergey, as she believes our guidance played a crucial role in steering him towards his true calling.

2. Rustam’s mother had taken him to several engineering hobby clubs before she discovered us. Due to his developmental peculiarities, they struggled to find a suitable environment for him. “Rustam kept interfering with the other kids’ activities, so we were asked to leave again and again. Yet I felt that Rustam had an aptitude for exact sciences and programming, so I never stopped looking for teachers for him,” his mother says.

As with many special children, socialization was the top priority in working with Rustam. When he came to us at the age of eight, he would rather cuddle with everyone and play hide-and-seek for hours. We looked long and hard for ways to motivate the boy to learn. Gently and tactfully, we would guide him towards those interests that could become the basis of his future professional career.

After two years of combined efforts from our team and his mother, Rustam became the absolute champion in the regional Programming Olympics. While his peculiarities did not go away completely, the latest summer camp session at our club made it clear that Rustam is now ready to become an integral part of the teenage community. Delighted with the transformation, his mother credits us for support in making a significant difference in her son’s life. The boy is eager to perceive knowledge despite distracting signals, and he has become more hard-working and more constrained in his emotions.

3. Children often come to our club by chance. Alexey is an eighth-grader whose mom brought him by the hand and said, “He doesn’t want to study, he’s not interested in anything, maybe you can do something about him.”

Here’s what Alexey himself tells about his experience: “Attending regular school has not been enjoyable for me in a long time. I often found myself asking, ‘Why learn this? Where would I ever use it?’ When I came to RHYTHM, I was offered a few trial classes. After that, I decided to enroll in the course on Blender 3D modeling. Blender is a versatile tool for working with 3D graphics, animation, even creating characters for computer games. Recently I participated in the ROBOART Interregional Open Festival of Scientific and Technical Creativity, getting the second place in 3D modeling discipline.”

Alexey has also taken a great interest in our electronics courses. He attends the club four times a week and is eager to continue his studies. He is set on entering a radio engineering college after completing the 9th grade.

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPACT