Youth Involvement in Social Practice Through the Grant Programs: The Analysis of an Activist Formation

This master's study is devoted to the study of activism as a social practice of young people who implement various social initiatives with the support of state grant programs. The study analyzes the process of forming the identity of a young person as an activist, using semi-standardized in-depth interviews (with elements of a biographical interview) and a questionnaire survey with activists as an empirical basis. According to the results of the author's research, the motives of participation in grant competitions, the role of grant support for young people, the stages of the formation of a young person as an activist were identified. The study also analyzes the social portrait of two groups under study: the winners of grant programs who have implemented their projects, and the volunteers who participate in the activities of organizations supported by grant programs, which allows us to draw conclusions about the process of forming the identity of a young person as an activist. The scientific novelty of the study is that it reveals the contradiction between the expectations of the state from grant programs, and how the attitude to activism among young people participating in such programs changes, respectively, the results of the study may be of interest to researchers of youth and social policy. From a practical point of view, the results and conclusions obtained are applicable to the development of a system to encourage young people to participate in grant competitions and other measures to support activism, since they allow us to find out how to reposition state grant competitions so that they become more attractive to young people.