Social responsibility
The work of these units in terms of developing local communities is aimed at determining common interests shared by NLMK Group, its employees, local communities, as well as governmental and local administrative bodies related to the sustainable development of the Company and the regions in which it operates and creating a positive environment for both employees and local communities.
NLMK’s social and charitable activities to support and develop the regions in which it operates are pursued chiefly in collaboration with the Company’s social partner, the Miloserdiye (Mercy) Charitable Fund for Social Assistance. The Fund supports the development of sports and healthcare, the preservation of cultural heritage, and provides assistance to retirees, veterans, and other vulnerable social groups. The Miloserdiye Fund is a longstanding trusted partner of NLMK in the Lipetsk and Belgorod Regions and in Altai Territory.
Over 30,000 people benefit from the Miloserdiye Fund each year. Miloserdiye implements charity projects in eight key areas.
- Care: supporting veterans’ organizations and former NLMK employees, providing assistance in obtaining medicines and reimbursing treatment costs, and organizing cultural events.
- Care: supporting veterans’ organizations and former NLMK employees, providing assistance in obtaining medicines and reimbursing treatment costs, and organizing cultural events.
- Sport: support for sports federations, funding for children’s and youth sport schools, and purchasing equipment.
- Children: supporting children’s homes and residential schools, organizing charity campaigns for children.
- Science and culture: supporting gifted children (winners of science, music and art competitions); creative groups, libraries, museums, and art galleries.
- Environment: purchasing specialized equipment, feed, and medicines for use in nature reserves and parks, forests, and veterinary clinics.
- Cultural development: funding charity concerts, drama festivals, and holiday events for residents of Lipetsk and the Lipetsk Region.
- One-off assistance: providing one-off assistance to public organizations, municipal institutions, and citizens affected by terrorist attacks or natural or man-made disasters.
2020 performance
Each year, NLMK allocates significant resources to social programmes in a variety of areas. In 2020, a total of RUB 1,028 billion was allocated to external social programmes, including support of the veterans and retirees (former employees). In the light of COVID-19 pandemic, significant funds went to support healthcare institutions and most vulnerable groups.
COVID-19 response
The Company focused all of its efforts on ensuring employee safety during the pandemic. In view of the epidemiological situation, a comprehensive programme to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 was initiated in March 2020. The programme covered all Group companies and certain categories in the communities of the regions where the companies operate, such as socially vulnerable groups and medical workers.
Many of our business processes have undergone changes. NLMK had two main goals: employee safety and production continuity. The Company has been successful in adapting to the new conditions.
The pandemic gave further impetus to the Company’s digitalization process, stimulated the development of the corporate volunteer movement, with more volunteers joining its ranks at Company level, and shifted the focus of charitable activities towards supporting healthcare.
NLMK navigated the crisis with confidence by relying on our diversified product line-up and flexible supply chains. The Company proceeded with its main investment projects planned for 2020. In this difficult period, our financial performance remained stable.
In 2020, the total programme budget for various measures to combat the pandemic amounted to more than RUB 4.7 billion, including RUB 4.1 billion for internal expenses (measures to reduce the risk of the spread of infection, social support for employees, etc.), RUB 0.6 billion for external social expenses (support of the regions where the companies operate).
Employee safety
- Over 100,000 COVID-19 tests for the employees
- 5,000 employees switched to working remotely
- Limiting business trips and in-person meetings, maximizing online training
- Changing work schedules to reduce workplace density
- More buses and routes to deliver employees to work
- RUB 30,000 in additional payments to staff to compensate pandemic-related expanses
Social assistance
- 67 ventilators
- 46 oxygen concentrators
- 4 PCR labs equipped
- >530,000 PPE units provided to medical facilities
- Vehicles for hospitals, X-ray machines, and other medical equipment
- 1,000 families of employees that have three or more children or are raising children with disabilities received financial support
- 25,000 food parcels were provided to elderly people, veterans, families with three or more underage children, and single parents in the regions where the Group operates
NLMK Group supports cultural and patriotic projects that aim to honour the country’s heroic past. Special emphasis is placed on patriotic education for youth. The Company organises meetings with war veterans, visits to historic military sites, and gives lessons in courage through schools and professional education institutions. The projects are run by veteran organisations and trade unions in conjunction.
NLMK Group and Vladimir Lisin, Chairman of the Board, provided financial support to a charity concert dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The concert was organised for students of military schools and children who live in orphanages and care homes, as well as schoolchildren, those who fought in small-scale wars, and Second World War veterans and their families. Ilya Reznik Music Theatre created the unique show ‘Serving Russia’ specially for the event.
It was the first time children from Lipetsk military schools attended a concert in the State Kremlin Palace. The cost of bringing 134 schoolchildren from the two Lipetsk schools was covered by ‘Miloserdiye’, NLMK Group’s charity fund.
Novolipetsk became an official sponsor of the nationwide campaign to distribute St George Ribbons in celebration of the 70th anniversary since the end of the Second World War. In the run-up to the significant date, a total of 30,000 St George Ribbons, symbols of remembrance, were given out to Novolipetsk employees.
Novolipetsk organised an arts competition for schoolchildren, in remembrance of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The event was part of ‘Our Victory’, a large-scale patriotic-historical project.
The event featured essay, drawing and battle model contests for schoolchildren aged 7 to 17. The contests welcomed children from all schools and children’s creativity centres in Lipetsk. Award categories included best literary work, best drawing, best mini-sculpture, best photograph, best computer graphics, and best model military vehicle or battle model.
Novolipetsk awarded winners with diplomas and gave gifts to the authors and leaders of the best projects. The best works were published on www.pobeda48.ru, a regularly updated website devoted to Second World War veterans who used to work for Novolipetsk.
War veterans who used to work at Novolipetsk and the plant’s younger staff shared a joint project titled ’Voices of Victory‘. A group of volunteers met with former Novolipetsk employees who were veterans of the Second World War to record interviews with them. The project gave younger staff a chance to learn about the country’s heroic past and to meet and talk with those who fought for the independence of the motherland and victory in the war.
A special website was created for the project (www.pobeda48.ru), which is regularly updated and contains a card file of Novolipetsk retirees and other residents of Lipetsk Region who fought in the war. The card file was created on the basis of archive documents and certificates about combatants, those who worked on the home front, and survivors of the Siege of Leningrad and the concentration camps.
For many years, NLMK Group has been providing broad support to the Russian Orthodox Church, playing an active role in reconstruction and restoration of churches that hold regular services and those that have been listed as architectural landmarks and turned into museums. Each year the Company makes donations to parishes in Lipetsk Region to fund construction, repairs and restoration of churches, as well as providing support to monasteries and convents.
Novolipetsk has a long-standing Easter tradition: each year on the eve of Easter one of the plant’s canteens makes about 4,000 kulich traditional Russian Easter breads, which are then blessed and distributed to the needy in Lipetsk. The local social support service distributes them to lonely elderly people and sends them to a care home for the disabled and the city’s Sunday school.
Novolipetsk also charters a special flight to Moscow, where the St Andrew the First-Called Foundation brings the Holy Fire from Jerusalem. A delegation of members of the Lipetsk and Yelets eparchies, who take part in the event, brings the Holy Fire to the Orthodox churches in Lipetsk Region for their Easter services.
Stoilensky donated 9 million rubles to renovate the Stary Oskol Culture and Arts Centre and 6 million rubles to establish a Kursk Magnetic Anomaly history museum in the city of Gubkin. The museum will occupy a former school which has been listed as a 20th century architecture landmark. The building is located in Saltykovo district. The bulk of the museum’s permanent collection was earlier displayed in Gubkin Local History Museum.
A sports ground was opened in Stary Oskol, built with Stoilensky’s funds, donated as part of Stoilensky’s ‘Sports Yard’ social project. The sports ground has a synthetic sports surface, which is good for staging volleyball, basketball, futsal and other sports competitions in summer. Construction costs totalled 4 million rubles.
Stoilensky also helped ‘Golden Gloves’, a specialised youth sports school that trains future Olympic athletes to buy new equipment as well as providing financial support to ‘Rusich’, a sports centre that promotes sports for all ages and abilities.
Novolipetsk funds ‘Lipetsky Metallurg’, a Lipetsk sports club that runs a successful programme aimed at promoting sports for all ages and abilities. The club provides everything needed for exercise and sports to Novolipetsk employees and their families, and welcomes other Lipetsk residents.
Lipetsk is also home to the club’s shooting sports centre which is one of the most advanced in Russia, a shooting range, and ‘Novolipetsky’ sports and recreation centre for summer and winter sports. The shooting sports centre is equipped to host international competitions.
The ‘Lipetsky Metallurg’ sports club alone welcomes more than 20,000 Lipetsk residents a year. Novolipetsk sports venues are available to those who wish to train. The Company promotes track and field and swimming.
Novolipetsk has also built a 4,310 sq. m multi-use sports complex in Lipetsk called ‘SportPark’. The complex has two tennis courts and rooms for billiards, bowling, squash and aerobics.
Novolipetsk annually awards the top students of local sports schools. The Physical Education and Sports Department of the Lipetsk City Administration hosted a ceremony to award promising athletes in December 2014. Six top young athletes received 5,000 ruble grants from Novolipetsk.
Novolipetsk has been providing support to Vocational School No. 10, renamed Lipetsk Polytechnic College in 2015, to hold their annual initiation ceremony welcoming students to their profession.
In 2015, 42 top graduates were awarded diplomas and received gifts from NLMK. The company also offered gifts to 17 teachers and vocational training instructors for their best efforts training the plant’s future employees. The class of 2015 was special, as it was the first to receive diplomas after the institution was renamed.
In order to provide career guidance assistance and to meet the demand for young skilled talent graduating from Lipetsk State Technical University (LSTU), Novolipetsk is running the ’NLMK Scholarship‘ programme. The programme is designed to stimulate academic, research and practical activities among promising students.
Thirty top graduate students are awarded certificates for a monthly scholarship of 4,000 rubles for the entire academic year. The scholarships are given to those who perform well academically and pass a competitive selection process. The first stage of the selection process is shortlisting, which is performed by the university faculty; the second stage is an interview with Novolipetsk top managers.
The ‘NLMK Scholarship’ programme also includes visits to the plant and other NLMK Group subsidiaries, meetings with the Company’s leadership and exciting sports competitions.
More than 400 LSTU students have won Novolipetsk scholarships since the company started awarding them in 2000. More than 130 of them are now working at the plant.
On the eve of Children’s Day in 2014, Novolipetsk organised an environmental game for local schoolchildren. Teamwork, dexterity and knowledge of the environment were tested in a quest game held by Novolipetsk’s KVN team (KVN, Club of the Funny and Inventive). Two schools participated in the game: School No. 12 and School No. 72. Each of the teams had to go on a quest consisting of ten parts by completing a set of tasks. Alexander Kononov, Head of Environmental Safety at Novolipetsk, gave a speech at the event, explaining the importance of environmental protection for Novolipetsk. The winners were rewarded with a game of paintball.
Stoilensky makes regular donations to ‘Bravissimo’, a modern dance group, to organise trips to perform in other cities. The plant also helped to improve the group’s dance room with new high-quality flooring, large mirrors, ballet-barres and an audio system, as well as an overhaul of the roof.
Altai-Koks provided financial support to help dance group ‘Zazerkalye’ go to Lipetsk to take part in ‘Metallink’a, and then to Belokurikha, which hosted a regional dance contest called ‘Zhar-Ptitsa’ (The Firebird).
Lyudmila Yepifanova, Zazerkalye Dance Group Instructor:
“Altai-Koks has been placing confidence in us and helping us participate in national and regional contests for many years, and we are trying to live up to the high expectations by winning prizes and diplomas. It’s very important for us to receive support from a company that is the mainstay of the city’s economy.”
Stoilensky provides support to Stary Oskol’s No. 1 Creativity Centre for Children and Youth (), the oldest institution offering extracurricular activities in Belgorod Region, with funds used to buy visual aids and textbooks. Stoilensky also helps the centre’s children participate in international and Russian competitions.
Stoilensky also made donations to Stary Oskol School No. 27 to make improvements in its classrooms, assembly hall, dance room, canteen and swimming pool. The plant also provided support to establish a military and patriotic club and a museum, which will soon be opened in the school.
Lipetsk has a science, technology and innovation centre called ‘Novator’, which aims to support and develop technical creativity in young people to build an innovative approach to engineering challenges; bringing up a new generation of pioneers in technology. The centre was opened in 2006.
The Lipetsk Chamber of Commerce and Industry thought it was a good idea to show the children what an advanced hi-tech plant is like in real life, and a group of young people attending ‘Novator’ went on a visit to Novolipetsk’s manufacturing shops.
Vladimir Savorona, Head of Professional Development, Novolipetsk:
“We are pleased to have the young people visiting our plant. I believe that it’s very important to start picking up technical knowledge when you are young. There’s always a lack of good technical experts. Who knows, maybe some of them will become Novolipetsk employees, innovators and inventors.”
Novolipetsk provides comprehensive support to ‘Prometheus’, a children’s summer camp that welcomes more than 1,600 children annually, including 900 children of the employees of Novolipetsk.
Each of the four children’s camp sessions in ‘Prometheus’ is focused on developing creativity and intellectual abilities. In 2014 the camp had a special project, ‘An Equation with Two Unknowns’, supported by Novolipetsk and the ‘Miloserdiye’ fund. The project was devoted to career choice, with a career in the metals industry as one of the paths. The children participated in a creativity contest (“NLMK is My Love”), an entertainment programme featuring contests and games (“Young Steelworkers”), a quiz (“Our Novolipetsk”) and other events. They also visited Novolipetsk and its museum, played sports and had the chance to travel.
About 800 children of all ages attended groups designed to develop technical creativity, visiting classes where they could operate machines used for modelling steelmaking processes.
Alexander Tonkikh, Acting Director of HR and General Matters, Novolipetsk: “Overall, we are happy with the past summer season: our employees’ children are now full of energy for the new school year. We will continue to provide comprehensive support to Prometheus so that it retains its status as the region’s best place for children to improve their health and learn new things in summer.”
In March 2015 Lipetsk hosted ‘Metallinka’, a national performing arts competition for children, which is organised by the Mining and Metals Trade Union of Russia each year. The 18th festival was supported by Novolipetsk.
The competition was attended by 25 children’s groups aged 8 to 11 hailing from Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Tagil, Pervouralsk, Krasnoturyinsk, Kamensk-Uralsky, Stary Oskol, Zarinsk, Novokuznetsk, Shelekhov, Zheleznogorsk and other cities that are home to mining and metals companies.
Festival participants and the adults accompanying them stayed in ‘Prometheus’, a children’s summer camp funded by Novolipetsk.
Alexander Sokolov, NLMK Group Vice President for Social Issues:
“Novolipetsk has a good reason to be one of the sponsors of this year’s ‘Metallinka’: we put great emphasis on supporting children and it is an honour for us to help organise the children’s arts festival. We also couldn’t stay away from the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2 –a very important occasion – and created a special prize for the best patriotic-themed performance. However, I think the festival itself is already a good example of patriotic education.”p>
NLMK Group strives to support gifted children including winners of science Olympiads and music and art competitions. The ‘Miloserdiye’ fund has developed a special programme for this called ‘Spiritual Development’. The Company provides support to musical and art schools, performance groups, art clubs for children, art and dance groups, libraries, museums and art galleries.
The Company has established a technical creativity centre for children and youth in Lipetsk, ‘Novolipetsky’. The centre holds classes for young model makers. The Company is also involved in organising an annual youth arts festival in Lipetsk for local children’s groups.
For the past five years, Altai-Koks has provided financial help to a health and exercise room for disabled children with cerebral palsy, autism and Down syndrome. The room was opened at a children’s creative centre in Zarinsk to help its little visitors learn through play. Thanks to the support of Altai-Koks, the health and exercise room regularly receives new furniture, special equipment and educational games.
Money raised by the ‘Miloserdiye’ charity fund is used to organise New Year parties for the children of Novolipetsk’s employees. More than 11,000 kids aged between 2 and 12 take part in theatrical shows, and all children under 14 receive gifts. Similar events are held by other NLMK Group companies.