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Motorbike race under motto of making family values stronger starts in Russia Far East

VLADIVOSTOK, July 26. /ITAR-TASS/. A major motorbike race under the motto of Russian fathers for a family with many children has started in Russian far eastern city of Vladivostok on Saturday.

Motorbikers from the Siberian motorbike club named after Russian St. Prince Dimitry Donskoy will visit 25 Russian cities riding from the far eastern city to Russia’s capital, Moscow. They will meet inmates of orphanages, young people serving in the army and will discuss family values with them in each of these cities.

Participants in the public action seek this way to draw attention of Russians to the problem of improving the demographic situation in the country, the problem of paternity and to shape a positive attitude to families with many children. The public campaign aims to propose to institute a new all-Russia holiday - Day of Father.

Before the start of the motor race a festive religious service was held at the Intercession of the Mother of God Church in the city of Vladivostok.

On Friday, motorbikers have already met students of a local sports school in Novik Bay on Russky Island. The next stopover of the motorbike race will be a correctional school for adolescent delinquents in Russian far eastern city of Ussuriisk. Motorbikers will debate family affairs with young offenders and will dwell them on their life experience.

The Russian Centre of National Glory, the Foundation of St. Andrew the First-Called, which is involved in missionary activities and delivers major religious and public programmes, jointly with the Defence Ministry and Russian parliament’s lower house State Duma committee for affairs of family, women and children are holding a nationwide campaign promoting family values in Russia.

The motorbike race will finish with a wreath-laying ceremony to the monument to St. Great Prince Dimitry Donskoy and St. Princess Euphrosyne of Moscow at the Church of Reverend Euphrosyne on Nakhimovsky Avenue in south-western Moscow on September 9.

“They [St. Prince Dimitry Donskoy and St. Princess Euphrosyne of Moscow] were parents of 12 children, gave a very worthy example to us and are patrons of a traditional family with many children,” said chief of Krasnoyarsk motorbike club Andrei Kochenov, who is one of organisers of the motorbike race.

Meanwhile Russia’s Health and Social Security Ministry reports a favourable growth of major demographic figures. On July 24, the ministry published a report on the population’s state of health and the organisation of the healthcare system in the year 2013.

In particular, a natural population growth has reached 24,000 people while in 2012 natural decline in the population stood at 4,200 people. So for the first time since the early 1990s, the national birth rate has overlapped the mortality rate.