HSE Students and Alumni in Charity Run

HSE Law Faculty alumni Oksana Akhmedova and Tatiana Zolotukhina won prizes at the annual Moscow Legal Run at VDNKh. 62 HSE students worked as volunteer organisers of the run.

On 31st May lawyers from Russian and international law firms, corporate lawyers from large and medium size businesses and other professionals from Moscow and other cities joined the charity run to raise money for the children’s health charity Podari Zhizn — Gift of Life.  The first run last year raised over 500, 000 roubles and this year they have collected 1,800,000 roubles.

Oksana Akhmedova who won the 10km and Tatiana Zolotukhina who came third in the 5km are both HSE graduates from the Jurisprudence programme from 2010 and 2011 respectively. Besides Oksana and Tatiana, about 40 HSE Law graduates joined the run.

There were 226 volunteers — 62 of them, HSE students and alumni.

‘Volunteering isn’t just a form of philanthropy and serving society and others, it’s also an opportunity to meet people from all different social and professional levels on equal terms,’ says Sergei Saveliev, of the law firm Nektorov, Saveliev and Partners, an HSE graduate who also teaches at the HSE Law Faculty in the School of Applied Jurisprudence. He was a volunteer at the run. ‘In Western countries it is seen as a good thing for successful professionals to get involved in charity, because volunteers are all equals and it’s a strong criteria for feeling united.’

There were Legal Runs in St Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Archangelsk, Samara and Novosibirsk too. Students and alumni from the HSE campuses in Moscow (Dmitry Taranov 2004 graduate) and Nizhny Novgorod joined in the Volga Legal Run in Nizhny. And in the Initiative group in London, two HSE graduates, Anastasia Pichugina and Daria Sakhno ran in the Legal Run on Primrose Hill. 

Dmitry Mazaev for HSE News Service