Junior Skills
5 November 2014
Volnoe Delo launches first Junior Skills competition
Yekaterinburg, November 2, 2014 – Volnoe Delo Oleg Deripaska Foundation, one of Russia’s largest privately-held charity funds, together with WorldSkills Russia held first national championship on cross-industry blue-collar professions among schoolers Junior Skills on October 30-November 2 in Yekaterinburg. Junior Skills which was a part of a bigger competition WorldSkills, has attracted 110 schoolchildren aged from 10 to 17 and 64 experts from eight Russian regions.
Organized by Volnoe Delo Oleg Deripaska Foundation together with WorldSkills Russia, Ministry of Industry and Trade, Agency for Strategic Initiatives and Sverdlovsk regional government, Junior Skills has comprised 53 teams from Moscow, Moscow region, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Ulyanovsk and Irkutsk regions as well as Krasnodar region and Republic of Tatarstan.
The participants competed in eight competencies: milling and turning on NC (numerical control) machines, mobile robotics, electronics, mechatronics, prototyping, engineering graphics, and aerospace engineering. Seven of them are traditional WorldSkills competencies while aerospace engineering is a presentational skill that was unveiled at the competition for the first time.
Teams from Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk region were the first in most of the competencies including milling and turning on NC machines, mobile robotics, mechatronics and prototyping.
A team from the town of Korolyov outside Moscow has taken the first prize in aerospace engineering.
Tamara Rumyantseva, head of Volnoe Delo Oleg Deripaska Foundation:
“The first Junior Skills competition has demonstrated that schoolchildren successfully coped with the tasks that are challenging even for the professionals. A combined competition between mature professionals and young specialists is a unique idea that proved its viability since all the generations are working together, learn from each other and get motivated for professional growth.”
Pavel Chernykh, Russia’s technical delegate in WorldSkills International:
“Following the competition, we want to introduce a combined format of WorldSkills tournament between adults and schoolers. We hope that joint contest will become traditional not only in Russia but in other countries all over the world.”
