Located in the very heart of Kikinda, on a section of the town square, the old playground shines in a new light thanks to NIS’ substantial donation. Kikinda Mayor Pavle Markov, NIS Naftagas-Oilfield Services Director Valery Proskurin and a number of City Council representatives attended the opening of the new playground. The company pays special attention to the youngest members of our community, and has established a tradition of investing heavily in projects that provide support to children. In addition to the Tartan™ surface, the new playground in Kikinda also boasts modern equipment which conforms to safety standards and is designed for preschoolers and older children. NIS cares about the most vulnerable groups as well – the playground also includes equipment for disabled children, which ensures that all children can grow and thrive in a healthy and safe environment. The Town of Kikinda is a particularly important business partner of the company – through its Together for the Community programme, NIS has been investing in the improvement of the quality of life in this local community for 11 years. This is underscored by the fact that over RSD 200 million has been invested in Kikinda through the Together for the Community programme; additionally, by the end of 2019, NIS intends to implement a health care programme which will further improve the quality of life of Kikinda’s citizens. Valery Proskurin, Director of NIS Naftagas-Oilfield Services, said on this occasion: “Our company devotes a lot of attention to the community in which it operates. Therefore, we supported the construction of a children’s playground in the centre of Kikinda within our Together for the Community programme for 2018. Thanks to this campaign, Kikinda now boasts a new urban area in which both parents and their children can enjoy. We are also very proud of our recently completed volunteer activity in which NIS’ volunteers and employees of the local government worked together on planting and landscaping the area surrounding the playground. In this way, we show that we believe that it is our priority to support young people, because they are our future. We will continue our collaboration with Kikinda in 2019 as well, when we plan to renovate the schoolchildren’s clinic in the Community Health Centre and donate a well-equipped ambulance vehicle“. Kikinda Mayor Pavle Markov also addressed the attendees: “Two years ago, we became aware of the sad fact that Kikinda did not have a single standardised playground. We made plans to change this, but when we assessed the entire situation, we realised that we would not be able to start building such a playground before 2022. Then, last year, we presented our idea to NIS. They accepted and supported our idea, and as a result, we can today open this nice, important and much needed playground. We would like to thank NIS for recognising the value of this idea and I hope that this company will continue supporting other projects of great value for our town in the next year as well. Several days before the official opening of the new playground in Kikinda, a volunteer activity was organised with NIS’ volunteers, representatives of the local government and many citizens. This volunteer activity and the playground renovation project show that NIS continues to popularise and promote physical activities and healthy lifestyles. Children are our future – and NIS actively invests in it by promoting its activities under the symbolic slogan Future at Work. For the previous 11 years, NIS has been implementing its Together for the Community social responsibility programme with the aim of improving the quality of life in 13 cities and municipalities in our country: Belgrade, Novi Sad, Niš, Čačak, Zrenjanin, Pančevo, Kikinda, Kanjiža, Novi Bečej, Srbobran, Žitište, Požarevac i Plandište. Over 900 projects from various fields, worth over RSD 1 billion, have been implemented within this programme. This year, the company has allocated RSD 116.5 million for support of children’s health care institutions.
