The annual Best Social Projects in Russia awards ceremony was held on September 17, with Gazprom Media and its TV channels NTV, Friday! TV-3 and Match Premier receiving eight awards in five nominations.
Gazprom Media won an award in the Education and Science nomination for its project #GPMTrendy (Gazprom Media Trends), a series of educational meetups and master classes with the company’s managers. The project launched in 2018 and was timed to the Holding's 20th anniversary.
NTV’s Puteshestvie Deda Moroza s NTV (The Journey of Santa Claus with NTV)—a large-scale charity in which the country’s official Santa Claus, together with NTV hosts and a film crew, takes a trip around the country ahead of the New Year and helps make dreams come true for people facing adversity—received an award in the Charity nomination. In the four years that the project has existed, the NTV crew has visited more than 300 social institutions and 300 low-income or large families, giving out over 500 tons of gifts and organizing hundreds of holiday surprises and more than 150 concerts.
NTV’s documentary Do i Posle... (Before and After...) won in the Helping Gifted Children and Youth nomination. This film tells the stories of children left without parental care who took part in the channel’s musical project Ty Super! (You are Super!). In illustrating these real-life stories, the documentary shows how Ty Super! changed the lives of children and helped make their dreams come true.
NTV also received a Socially Responsible Mass Media award for supporting charity projects on air, and the channel continues airing and developing content about social causes, including its singing contest Ty Super!, as well as Zhdi Menya (Wait for Me), Sekret na Million (Secret Worth a Million), and the charity campaign Puteshestvie Deda Moroza s NTV. Moreover, NTV’s news programs have been supporting charitable and social projects for many years, broadcasting about 100 news pieces on charities in 2019 and fundraising about 200 million rubles for them, as well as charity foundations.
Two of Friday!’s projects also won awards in the same nomination: Patsanky (Tomboys) and Revizorro. Patsanky is a reality show and social experiment about young women with tragic pasts who seek help from professional coaches and psychologists to overcome bad habits and improve their lives. On the air since 2016, the fifth season is scheduled to launch September 24, 2020. Revizorro has likewise become one of the channel’s flagship shows, having changed the country’s service industry, increased the quality of hotel service, and drawn the attention of regulatory agencies to problems in the restaurant sector.
TV-3 also won a Socially Responsible Mass Media award for its documentary Vernuvshiesya (Those Who Returned), which tells the stories of people who went missing and the search for them. It also explains what to do if you or a loved one cannot find the way home. Since going on air, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of calls to missing-people hotlines in the first 24 hours after a person has disappeared, which makes it more likely to find them. The project has also increased the general knowledge of the population on what to do when getting lost in the wilderness or the city and what to do if a relative or friend goes missing.
The Match Premier charity campaign Kommentatory v Gostyah u Detei (Sports Commentators Visit Children) won a Projects that Support Vulnerable Population Groups award. The channel’s team visited children at the Maikop special education school, where commentators Alexander Shmurnov, Roman Naguchev, Alexander Aksyonov and Mikhail Melamed played football with troubled teenagers; took them on a tour of the Krasnodar stadium; and gave them gifts and TV equipment to watch sports channels. It is an example of how Match Premier promotes a healthy lifestyle and provides guidance to youth and troubled teenagers.
Gazprom Media has taken part in the Best Social Projects in Russia program since 2017. In this time, the Holding’s companies have received 28 awards for social and charitable initiatives.
