Conference Highlighting Role of Charity Held in Russia

Charity News Online
Lisa Vronskaya

A “revival of the spirit of charity in Russia” is the focus of an international conference hosted this weekend by the St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy in Russia’s second-largest city.

Speakers at the conference included local government administrators, business people, welfare practitioners, managers of charities, investment organizations and others connected with charitable work. They discussed American, Asian and Islamic ways of charity, along with what kind of charity Russia needs today and potential legislation regarding charity.

The conference organizers said their goal was “to begin a public discussion about aims and kinds of charity in modern Russian society.”

Natalia Pecherskaya, Rector of the St. Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy, saw a need for promoting charity in Russia, where charity was forbidden in the Soviet period.

Dr. Pecherskaya’s non-Church, non-State Institute opened in 1990, with the help of small donations from local people. In 1996, the School published a book on Russian Orthodoxy and philanthropy, and the upcoming conference on “Charity in Russia” is the next step.