Svetlana Medvedev, the wife of President Dmitry Medvedev, on Wednesday attended the opening ceremony of the Raduga Children’s Activity Center designed for up to 2,000 children in the town of Dmitrov outside Moscow.
Svetlana Medvedev, the wife of President Dmitry Medvedev, on Wednesday attended the opening ceremony of the Raduga Children’s Activity Center designed for up to 2,000 children in the town of Dmitrov outside Moscow.
The First Lady cut the ribbon, was given a bread-and-salt welcome and listened to children sing a Russian folk song.
As many as 1,400 children aged 6-18 currently attend the center’s 58 groups in various spheres of activity. Classes can be conducted in two shifts, from morning until night.
Svetlana Medvedev was told about the various groups and visited the aircraft modeling class where children also receive tuition in the basics of aircraft design, while senior students train in skydiving.
The boys who attend the aircraft modeling group told the First Lady that they start with paper airplanes and then proceed to matchstick planes. Senior students make radio controlled model aircraft.
Girls can take up needlework, folk crafts and making stuffed animals. The center also offers tuition in dancing, clay modeling and sculpture, painting and choir.
Svetlana Medvedev was particularly impressed by the center’s young journalist school, where teenagers publish a youth supplement to the regional newspaper Fishka (Shtick). “The newspaper has a catchy modern name and, as I can see, carries positive information about the life of young people and children,” she said. “And, thank God, not a word about politics.”
