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Step Up brings together an amazing group of people – teachers, students and volunteers. Thanks to them the Centre is a place where anyone can find support and self-belief. Here is what our colleagues, students and volunteers think about us.

While studying at Step Up, I always enjoy attending Literature Club.

Why do I go?? Well, because it helps me develop, I learn new words and begin to understand the great works of world literature!!

Because I want to be an actor!! It’s important for me. And it’s also interesting to come to such meetings.

Sergei BorisovStep Up student

I always worry when you guys throw lessons. This, unfortunately, happens. It is always hard to think that anyone of our guys joined standard for Russia orphan statistics. Inspire and delight me our guys. I never cease to admire their desire to move up. And we also have a terrific staff!

Olga TikhomirovaDirector

One sunny Sunday morning, a group of students from Step Up were given the chance to get to grips with the art of photography.

The photography master class for Step Up was led by photographer and director Alexander Kott on Old Arbat. Having given some initial advice, Alexander divided students up into pairs and sent them to take each other’s portrait against a background of their choosing.

Howard Amosvolunteer

Every charity should have its myth, an over-arching idea. Our organisation’s idea is that, in a perfect world, every child should strive to achieve their goals – and that goal is their quest. All of us here have a common quest: a journey with some kind of magical end point. Not just any old journey, but one that demands regeneration, a commitment to overcoming difficulties, and entailing change. All for an enchanted goal. Knowledge is not an end in itself; it is bewitching, and in searching for it people change in wonderful ways.

Mikhail Sverdlovhead of the Literature Club

Step Up isn’t just a place where you learn, but also a home in which goodness, love, understanding, friendship and self-belief are born.

It is the steps upward that lighten our life and strengthen our confidence.

You just need not to be lazy and get on with it.

Polina Bykonyagraduate of Step Up

When I became the director of Step Up, I knew that I wanted to create a place where students can come at any moment, a place where they know that they are welcome and a place where they are heard out and can talk about absolutely anything. Of course it’s hard for teachers when a pupil misses lessons. But I’m not very strict about stopping those who skip classes from coming entirely. An evening here is always more useful than an evening spent in some other place in our big city.

Olga Tikhomirovadirector of Step Up

At Step Up you can always get involved and receive a ton of positive feedback and treasured memories – that’s why people want to return here. Sooner or later almost everyone who ends up at Step Up brings along his or her colleagues, friends or relatives. I have always thought that this speaks volumes.

Darya Alekseevavolunteer

“It’s true that Step Up is a place that helps graduates of correctional and psychoneurological institutions. But it’s also true that Step Up is something more than that: it is therapy through freedom, though not unlimited freedom. It is education, rather than just being handed things on a plate. It is a fervent, though not blind, belief in every individual”.

Anna Ulyanovapsychologist

On the 14th of January, Ritmosfera put on an evening charity event to celebrate Old New Year. While most of our students spent most of the time trying getting to grips with musical instruments for the first time ever, everything went wonderfully!

Ritmosfera Companypartner

The majority of the young people with whom we work have never had anyone take a sincere interest in what’s going on in their lives.

Step Up has become a place where people confide in each other knowing that there is real interest in their lives. I often say that I love my job because its most important aspect is chatting over tea.

Ekaterina KurdyukovaEnglish teacher at Step Up