For 27 years, the German-Russian Exchange in St

For 27 years, the German-Russian Exchange in St. Petersburg (GRE) has been working to facilitate the exchange of innovative ideas and experience among activists, non-profit organizations, socially responsible business and public sector. German-Russian Exchange in St. Petersburg and its partner organization, Deutsch-Russischer Austausch in Berlin (DRA), were founded in 1992 by a group of German activists. Since its inception, the main objectives of our organization have been to foster volunteering and to support third sector organizations, which are one of the key elements of any civil society. Now GRE aims to support civic initiatives and ideas through international cooperation. German-Russian Exchange is a non-governmental organisation with a legal status of Ltd. Together with our local and international partners we are working in the following fields: - volunteering projects (including ESC volunteering activities) and international exchange programs; - implementation of projects in the fields of non-formal education, intercultural communication, human rights and equality, sustainable development and active citizenship; - organization of public events on Russian, European and international development of societies: discussions, lectures, summer schools, debates and exhibitions, regular meetings of the discussion clubs in foreign languages; - organisation of study trips to Russia aimed at exploring of culture, society, history and politics in our country; - creation and support of cultural, social and environmental civic initiatives of active youth and NGOs. We work with people to give them an opportunity: - for intercultural exchange both in Russia and abroad; - for free opinion exchange; - to discover more about Europe, its culture, political and economic issues; - to discuss the cooperation between Europe and Russia. Our target groups within various programmes: - Young people aged 18 to 30 within ESC volunteering projects; - Young people aged 13 to 30 within international youth exchange programs (including Erasmus+ opportunities) with a focus on youngsters with fewer opportunities: remoted places of living and small towns, economical and social disadvantaged youth – graduates of orphanages and special-needs schools; - Students, graduates and young specialists aged 18 to 35 within internship programme in cooperation with partner organizations from Finland and Switzerland; - Young people aged 18 to 30 within Au-pair programme; - Participants of our public events and speaking clubs, the age often vary between 17 and 70 years; we hold such events ~ 2-5 times in a month, organized by the GRE alone or in cooperation with other projects/NGOs. On each event we have 30-50 participants.