Interview with Irina Badayan

Irina Badayan, Deputy Mayor of Sochi, joined Russia Today to share her opinion on how citizens of Sochi are going to cope with hosting 2014 Winter Olympics challenge.

Russia Today: Could you tell me how citizens of Sochi will change in terms of coping with being an Olympic city?

Irina Badayan: I am a teacher and I understand that some social groups are more ready for changes, some of them do not understand what the point of changing is. I could tell you that all teenagers and young people are looking forward to the Games. They are very much opened. Now we have a lot of foreign language courses, IT technology courses. Demand is growing for young specialists. It indicates for me that young people understand that there will be a prosperous period during which they will learn new technologies and acquire real flexible professional competence. Therefore it means they will begin to work like teams small teams, to make some effective projects and it also means that they will begin to change the face of the professional competencies, which is very important. Economy of our town will develop and that means it will become richer and have bigger budget. Of course living here will become more expensive. But, as a person responsible for the social issues in this region, I am sure that having considerably richer budget, we will have means to support old and disabled citizens of our city.