OREANDA-NEWS. December 03, 2010. Citibank won second prize in the category for the Best Program To Develop Charity in Society at the 2009 Awards for Russian Leaders in Corporate Philanthropy. The awards were organized by the business newspaper Vedomosti, the professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Donors Forum, a coalition of private and non-governmental organizations working in philanthropy in Russia, reported the press-centre of Citibank.

Citibank was honored with this award as a reflection of its efforts to involve students in the work of non-profit organizations in collaboration with the Focus-Media Foundation. The program has been running since 2008 in a number of Russian cities, including Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don and Volgograd. Under the program, students have been enrolled on distance learning courses and received special training before going on to work in non-profit organizations where they developed social projects. The best projects were then selected to receive financial support and the most promising students received awards.

Since the program began, over 300 students have received training and 64 projects have been developed, more than half of which were selected to receive financial support from Citi.

"Involving young people in charity and non-profit organizations we lay the basis of the future socially-responsible civil society in Russia. It is an honor for us that our programs in this sphere have received such high recognition from the professional community," commented Tatiana Avramenko, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager at Citibank in Russia. "Citi will continue to implement social projects to develop charity in Russia."

The aim of the 2009 Awards for Russian Leaders in Corporate Philanthropy is to identify best practices in the creation and implementation of corporate charitable programs and to promote them within the business community and society on the whole.