A week before the Olympic Games, 25 thousand volunteers arrived in Sochi. Their average age is 25 years, with about 60% females and 40% males. The majority of volunteers were selected from the Krasnodar region, including Sochi (24%), as well as Moscow (11%) and St. Petersburg (7%), the Moscow Region (almost 7%) and the Rostov region (3%). All of them will serve at Olympic events, help with arrival and departures and work as interpreters. About 2,000 volunteers are foreigners, 10% of whom are from the United States, 9% from Ukraine, 8% each from Canada, the UK and Kazakhstan, 7% from Germany, 4% each from France and Belarus, as well as several people from Japan, New Zealand, Cameroon, Congo and Pakistan.
Sochi State University is one of the largest volunteer centers. Galina Konovalova, Vice Rector for Academic Affairs and Quality of Educational Activities, said "We have trained over 1500 Olympic volunteers, plus we are doing a great job in training city volunteers, who will work not only at Olympic venues, but also in the city of Sochi - welcoming and greeting the guests."
Ms Konovalova believes that volunteering turned out to be just the Social Institute to unite the youth. "It is about communication, tolerance, empathy, respect. Young people are the leaders, the team leaders who will lead the Olympics, they are in charge. And it was very interesting to watch when older people obeyed youths (which is not typical for our mentality), they performed their functions. It is very important to form a team spirit, a spirit of leadership, as well as a spirit of collective subordination and respect for the views of the team. Therefore, the mixture of all these components is very important for our young people, because they are very talented... The Olympics were necessary for the country in terms of association of all the young people of our country for such a great deed as volunteering"
