community
of Smena Station
A skill of choosing one's company is a skill of someone who is ready to take responsibility for the state of his soul.
© Julianna Wilson
Immediacy
Valery Mativenko, designer and marketing manager
We’re striving to break the barriers that are built between people and cultures. Before each event we practice “check ins”. It means that people can tell about their feelings and emotions “here and now” so that other members could sync with your current state of mind and the context of your thoughts. It helps to hear and do be heard without any judgment. It’s also a good chance to share your success or even a failure and ask for support. This format of communication at Smena is a practice of cautiousness that teaches you to feel yourself at any point of time and not to be ashamed of your own feelings.
Leave no trace
Mary Veselova, founder of authenticdutchbrands.com
Smena takes care of environment and all the members are trying not to leave any trace neither at the Station nor in the nature that surrounds it. On the beaches of Sri Lanka you can often find signs like “Leave nothing but footprints”. Here it’s very easy to feel the need to conserve resources especially because of indifference of locals towards the beauty that surrounds them. Smena-people understand that little steps are a base of huge changes.
Civic responsibility
Alexander Len, pre-press designer
Civic Responsibility is one of the basic features of a person as a unit of society. It’s inherent to everyone. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to be a nonconformist we are all together in this and we can’t go on without being responsible for our actions. Smena is a kids camp for adults that is built on principles that are practically well known. Why? Because 99% of these rules and laws are pure common sense. Being a part of the Station you don’t really have to follow any rules. You just have to be cautious, comprehensive and integral. Which is easy, because if you won’t get here if you don’t have these qualities.
Gifting
Kseniya Apresyan, designer and illustrator
Every day at Smena people share a lot with each other. And it’s not just fruits or coconut pancakes. Every day I was getting a lot and gave even more stuff to others. From coffee in the morning, advice about correct asanas and travels to consultations on business, investment and startups. People just dropped what they were doing, their work, to help me with whatever I needed. I tried to do the same. The principle that “every work must be paid” transformed into “when you’re giving something and waiting for something, you get it. And when not expecting to get anything in return - you get twice as much”.
Participation
Varvara Karaseva, 80lvl marketing and targeting manager
It’s when a member is putting a maximum amount of effort to participate in development of a project of another person. Once a week we hold extremely useful mastermind groups. Members tell about their projects and get feedback on them: questions, advice and some healthy criticism of course. In the city we often hold this inside ourselves being afraid of competitors or that someone will steal our priceless idea or will criticize it to a point when we will want to drop everything and never try coming up with something like that again. And here it’s the opposite - ideas are waiting to be heard, they are expecting to be criticized and become even better after they do!
Radical inclusion
Alena Morozova, copywriter
Smena is people. And they are it’s most valuable element. We’re all different, with different backgrounds and professional experience. An impetuous architect, an SMM fisherman girl, a wickedly tattooed young graphic designer. What do we have in common? Yes, we love to travel and we have a pro-active attitude. But if you look deeper we all have a more important thing in common - we live the life we want to, not we are told to live. It’s easier to put yourself into a standard framework then to search for your own path. Smena gave us an opportunity to find like minded peers. People that go along with you, maybe not the same way, but certainly in the same direction.
Smena-people's stories,
written by colleagues + real feedback with links
