I. Metshin: “Students are active citizens who are just learning, but already willing to change the world around them”

(KZN.RU, January 21, Alena Miroshnichenko). Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan, supported the initiative of the Committee on Children and Youth Affairs to more actively involve students in internships in the structures of the Executive Committee and subordinate institutions. As he noted today at the Business Monday, students are active citizens who are just learning, but already willing to change the world around them. However, they need both knowledge and practice for this.

A growing number of applications for participation in the competition for the Mayor's scholarship in the field of the urban economy shows students' interest in the development of urban infrastructure, said Airat Faizov, the chairman of the Committee on Children and Youth Affairs. Thus, a record was broken in 2018, and 270 applications were submitted to the competition. The winners were the authors of 38 of the highest quality works, which were sent to the Executive Committee units to study the possibility of their implementation.

However, in the course of preparing for the competition and communicating with student assets, it turned out that students are not informed about the work of the municipality enough. “Only a small number of students consider the Executive Committee as a possible future place of work due to lack of information. And when we start talking about the city and its projects, sometimes there is a certain distrust of the possibility of implementing our student ideas. At the same time, we heard the opinion that students in many universities would be interested in taking part in the implementation of urban projects in the reciprocal movement of the municipality”, said A.Faizov. He suggested that talented students be more actively involved in solving urban problems.

The Mayor reminded that the city has already successful experience of cooperation with students of the KSUAE in the implementation of the project “100 parks and squares”. “Despite their youth, students’ creative ideas are realizable and very useful for our current activities”, said the Mayor. “This project began from the desire to make Kazan well-planned and with their young talent. Then he grew into a large-scale republican project, and into a federal one by the example of the republic”, he added.

The Mayor agreed that more active involvement of students in the discussion and solution of urban problems might be useful, especially if there is such a need. He instructed to work out the issues of organizing practice for students in the structures of the Executive Committee and subordinate institutions, organize meetings of heads of structural divisions of the Executive Committee with students of universities to tell them about the strategic tasks facing the city, and to plant the interest of future young professionals in their decision.

“Let's start the year with such an initiative. Let's communicate with the students. The world is changing very quickly with new technologies, and it will be useful for us to exchange views with our students”, he concluded.