Forum "Strong Ideas for the New Times": projects are selected in 7 areas

On March 22, at a press conference in TASS, Maxim Oreshkin, Assistant to the President of Russia, Svetlana Chupsheva, General Director of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI), and Igor Shuvalov, Chairman of VEB.RF, announced the collection of ideas for the second forum "Strong Ideas for the New Times", which is held by ASI and Roscongress Foundation. Applications are accepted on the ideas.roscongress.org crowd platform until April 22.

“Now we are at the beginning of a long journey forward, and this applies not only to the Russian economy, but to the whole world. From the point of view of people's self-realization, this is a time of great opportunities: the need for new ideas and the conditions for their implementation converge at one point. Such a unique format of the forum will allow to accumulate proposals from citizens from all over the country and form promising projects for the development of Russia: to change the situation in a particular area, to help various categories of citizens,” said Maxim Oreshkin, who is the Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Forum.

“In the current situation, we need ideas that can be implemented fairly quickly and will be aimed at solving acute problems that arise and will arise as a result of sanctions. We are waiting for people who are open for dialogue and ready to share their experience and proposals for changes for the better to the forum,” Svetlana Chupsheva noted.

She said that at this forum the number of directions in which ideas are being collected has increased - there are seven of them.

“We are also making a separate youth track, which will be held at the regional level. There we adapt ideas to the needs of young people. We invite children from 16 to 24 years old to join this work. They can also propose initiatives and projects for the development of their city or region. The best of the projects will be supported at the level of the region and the federation, some ideas will be supported by the ASI,” Svetlana Chupsheva noted.

VEB.RF Chairman Igor Shuvalov spoke about the principles for updating the ASI Expert Council, which will select ideas for their practical application.

“We will rely on higher education, on science. We plan to launch the expert track in 30-40 leading universities. An expert can also be someone who creates a specific product, who has practical experience. This, for example, is the head of a small or medium-sized enterprise that has shown itself well at the municipal level, has serious experience in the market, and is engaged in charitable activities. The head of such an enterprise is the main expert on how to change the life around him,” said Igor Shuvalov.

At the initial stage, the wide expert community of the Agency will be engaged in evaluating ideas on the crowd platform, the task of which will be to select the top 1000 ideas. This work must be completed by the beginning of May. The ASI Expert Council, the new composition of which is currently being formed, will select the top 200. By June, the chairman and bureau of the ASI expert council will select the top 100 ideas.

Ideas are accepted in seven thematic areas:

- "National Social Initiative" (NSI) - ideas for the development of new models for improving the quality of social, medical and educational services; on the effective fight against poverty and the provision of social support measures; to reduce mortality from non-communicable, cardiovascular and other chronic diseases.

- "National Technology Initiative" - ​​ideas that help provide low-mobility citizens with environmentally friendly transport; on the implementation of technological solutions in the field of health saving and adaptive nutrition, taking into account health indications; to create a network of engineering and educational consortiums in Russian universities and scientific organizations.

- "National Personnel Initiative" - ​​ideas for creating a system of additional education and career guidance for children; to create opportunities for youth entrepreneurship and employment; to support a person in finding a job and developing a career.

- "National Ecological Initiative" - ​​ideas for preparing and adapting the state, business and population to the consequences of climate change; on the formation and development of a market for solutions and services that improve the environmental well-being of citizens with the help of "clean technologies".

- "Entrepreneurship" - ideas to increase investment activity in the regions; to reduce administrative pressure on businesses and improve the business climate for SMEs and the self-employed.

- "Development of regions" - ideas for creating new interregional projects, which should become a point of growth for neighboring regions; for the development of services that allow using the wealth of the Arctic for the breakthrough development of the country, as well as projects that offer new meanings and missions for the development of small towns and villages.

- "Open Conversation" - non-standard ideas for the development agenda of Russia - 2030, not included in other thematic tracks.

Forum participants will be able to develop an idea and get feedback from the expert community, go through an accelerator and prepare projects based on their ideas, find supporters and like-minded people, and form a project team.

The final point will be a face-to-face two-day forum. It will take place in the summer of 2022. It is planned to present 100 best ideas and projects there, and within the framework of the plenary session, to demonstrate 10 of them to the country's leadership.

As a reminder, the first forum of ASI and the Roscongress Foundation "Strong Ideas for a New Time" was held in November 2020. Out of 15,000 ideas submitted to the forum’s crowd platform, experts selected 1,000 projects for further development, 828 were awarded by the regions, 592 successfully completed the forum’s acceleration program, 100 thought leaders were invited to participate in SPIEF and WEF, more than 80 ideas formed the basis of a new ASI strategies.