ST. PETERSBURG, November 28. /TASS/. The European University at St. Petersburg won a presidential grant of 3.9 million rubles ($67 thousand) for the project "Interactive Educational Platform of the Russian Arctic: People and Infrastructure," the University’s representative Alla Samoletova told TASS on Tuesday.
"The European University’s project "Interactive Educational Platform of the Russian Arctic: People and Infrastructure" has won a presidential grant of 3,092,806 rubles," she said. "The project’s initiators were three research institutes of our university - the Center for Science and Technology Research, the Center for the North’s Social Research and the Research Center for Energy Policies."
The grant’s money will be used for work on an interactive map of the Russian Arctic zone, which will show infrastructure and social facilities - the roads, pipelines, and utilities’ facilities. The researchers will also work on recommendations for lessons on the Arctic for children and the youth; they will publish booklets and video materials about life in the region.
The project’s objective is to attract attention to the human resource and to infrastructures of the Russian Arctic zone. "Currently, the media images of the Arctic usually associate the region with the virgin nature, unique fauna, the vast areas with no people nearby and with severe climate, where only heroes may survive. Our project is aimed at changing such cliches <…>," the university’s representative said.
According to the Fund of Presidential Grants, winners of the second competition were 2,243 non-governmental organizations from all the 85 regions. The total value of all the grants in the second competition is 4,404 billion rubles ($75.5 million). Over the current year, 3,213 organizations have won presidential grants - about twice more than a year earlier.
The European University at St. Petersburg is a private Master university, which was opened in 1994. It offers educational programs for 266 students at five humanitarian faculties. The University’s license was revoked in July 2017. The University now undertakes the third attempt to present all necessary paperwork to the regulator. In the current year, no new students were enrolled. As of now, the non-governmental organization continues working as a research institute.