ASU News

The autonomous non-profit organization "Helping Hand", created on the basis of the Department of Social Work and Tourism of the Adyghe State University, became the winner of the Adygea grant competition for the development of civil society in 2025 with the project "Alphabet of my family: socially-oriented types of activities for children and families with children in difficult life situations". A grant of 1.3 million rubles was allocated for the implementation of the project.
 
In addition to the non-profit organization, the project will be organized by the team of the ASU project "Adygea - Territory of Health" of the "Priority" program.
 
The goal of the project is to increase the level of viability and social adaptation of children in difficult life situations and help maintain blood relations in their families. The project provides for a set of activities that, on the one hand, will ensure the prevention of antisocial behavior of adolescents through the construction of an individual development trajectory, and on the other hand, the prevention of family distress.
 
The socio-cultural platform for the thematic cycle of events will begin work in September at the Science and Innovation Park of the Adyghe State University. It will host training sessions, family cultural and leisure activities, entertainment and game programs, general charity and targeted campaigns to help an individual family.
 
- Children in difficult life situations are not ready for constructive social interaction. They experience serious psychological difficulties in communication, and they indirectly demonstrate these difficulties by conflict, sabotage of family and school events. A family with children in a difficult life situation is experiencing a crisis. In such families, we often see a lack of trusting communication, parents and children rarely spend time together, which leads to a distortion of parent-child relationships and becomes a risk factor in the formation of various forms of family distress. In many ways, the inclusion of the project's target group in various types of socially-oriented activities allows us to solve these problems, - said Maria Paatova, a member of the project team, professor at ASU.
 
Socially-oriented activities have been developed using social and pedagogical technologies. The value of the project also lies in the fact that ASU student volunteers in the Social Work program will take part in its organization, who, during the project implementation, will become "Significant Adults" for children in difficult life situations, assistants to the children's parents in the process of their upbringing and successful socialization. The student volunteers of the project, having gained such experience, will form a personnel reserve for the social sphere of Adygea in the future.

The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of June next year. During this time, the team will work with a hundred children of the target group and with at least ten families in Adygea who need such socially-oriented activities.
 
Let us recall that the well-being of families with children is one of the main objectives of the Plan of Key Events carried out within the framework of the Decade of Childhood for the period up to 2027, approved by the order of the Government of the Russian Federation of January 23, 2021. To this end, special attention is proposed to be paid to the formation of responsible and conscious parenting, the creation of a unified comprehensive system of support for families with children who find themselves in a difficult life situation, the creation of social conditions for the early detection of family and child distress and the organization of individual support.