On 28 March 2014, the Gorbachev Foundation hosted a conference themed “Social Exclusion: Understanding and the Experience of Overcoming” and co-organised by the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies (The Gorbachev Foundation) and SAMU Social Moskva charitable foundation.

 

Until recently, the term “social exclusion” or “exclusion from society” was used to describe individuals who lost jobs or had no access to the labour market or were unwilling to take a job. Lately, this concept has been expanded to include very diverse groups of people – the homeless or persons of no fixed abode (SDF in French), drug or alcohol addicts, the mentally ill, the beggars, etc. So now, the concept of “social exclusion” covers a very diverse range of social groups deprived of both material and non-material (safety, respect, acceptance, etc.) goods.

 

The Conference was opened by Olga Zdravomyslova, Executive Director of the Gorbachev Foundation, Frédéric Mondoloni, Chargé d'Affaires Ambassade de France, and Irene Zaiontchec, President of SAMU Social Moskva charitable foundation.

 

Russian-French dialogue on social exclusion and the experience of overcoming it was launched by Dr. Xavier Emmanuelli, the founder of SAMU Social Moskva and SAMU Social International, who later became a co-founder and subsequently President of Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, NGO.

 

Speakers at the Conference included Alexei Levinson, Lead Researcher at Levada-Center; Yelizaveta Glinka, Fair Aid Foundation; Anastasia Sosnina, TheAndrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice; Andrei Pentyukhov, Head of Division for Social Assistance to the Homeless at the Moscow City Department for Social Protection of Moscow Citizens; and Boris Tretyak, Director of Lyublino Social Adaptation Centre.

 

Participants in the discussion that followed included experts, public figures, and activists from NGOs engaged in social work.