Welcoming the Forum’s participants, Olga Kazanskaya, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, said that the Forum is an important event for the city: “Each fourth resident of St. Petersburg is a representative of the older generation. 170,000 of them are veterans of and participants in the Great Patriotic War, people who lived through the siege of Leningrad, veterans of labor, minor prisoners of concentration camps. Because of that, caring for the older generation is a priority issue for the city’s government, and it gives us great pleasure to take part in business events and share all these innovations and explain the operation of the social security and support program for elderly people.”

According to Dr. Marvin Formosa, Director of the International Institute of Ageing (United Nations – Malta), St. Petersburg is the first among Russian cities in terms of length of life span: “Every year, the Older Generation Forum actively draws the public’s attention to the problems of elderly people, emphasizing improving the quality of life of elderly people, which determines good indicators of demographic ageing to a great extent.”

Pavel Soltan, Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, confirmed this, adding that the Forum is a unique business venue for exchanging experience, learning about innovative developments and new services. The speaker also mentioned that this year, the exhibition acquired a new home – it takes place in the Expoforum Convention and Exhibition Center, opening a new page in the history of the development of Russia’s oldest sector project.

A VIP tour of the exhibition took place as part of the program. Olga Kazanskaya, Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, Alexander Rzhanenkov, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Social Policy, Pavel Soltan, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and Sergey Voronkov, ExpoForum-International Director General, took part in the tour. Participants offering services for the older generation to improve communicative, intellectual and creative skills, were of special interest to the delegation. As a result, skilled craftswomen from the St. Petersburg Regional Public Organization of Gardeners “Urozhay” (Harvest) met the guests at the stand of the St. Petersburg Administration for Development of Fruit Growing and Gardening. They teach anyone who is interested about home carving, i.e. fancy carving, of vegetables and fruit. In addition, expert consultations in accounting, farming and other useful areas were presented on the stand. Representatives of the FotoFinder company presented the latest developments in the field of melanoma diagnostics, which allow the number of cases of unfounded surgery of non-malignant pigmented neoformations on the skin to be reduced considerably. They presented these developments at the collective stand of Obligatory Medical Insurance: “FotoFinderdermoscope is 100% reliable and very long-lasting, and is the ideal choice for consulting rooms and clinics”. This year, the St. Petersburg Labor and Employment Committee presented more than 1,200 job vacancies for the elderly people of our city on its stand in such fields as construction, transport, public catering, retail trade and much more.