On 18 December 2014, an award ceremony was held in the Rostov Region Philharmonic Hall for winners of the annual scholarship competition run by Center-invest Bank and the Endowment Fund for Science and Education in the Southern Federal District.

This year, 263 students from the Rostov region’s leading higher education institutions were each awarded a scholarship of RUB20,000. They will also have the chance to work as an intern at Center-invest Bank.

Among the participants in the Rostov Region ceremony were: the chairman of the Board of Directors of Center-invest Bank, Dr Vasily Vysokov; the Rostov Region Minister for Economic Development, Alexander Levchenko; member of the Board of Trustees of the Endowment Fund for Education and Science in the SFD, former president of the Deutsche Bundesbank, Ernst Welteke; and the heads of universities.

Thanking Center-invest Bank, Mr Levchenko said, " ... the top students, who are receiving awards today, are our future, our future prospects. And so we can confidently and proudly assert that our economy and our country has a bright future and bright prospects, and we will move forward in this direction.“

“Every year we see very interesting trends in the work of the new generation of recipients of Center-invest Bank scholarships”, Dr Vysokov said. “Notably, their work is becoming more multidisciplinary, and they are applying best international practice. The winners of the Endowment Fund competition also win many other highly regarded competitions, including international ones. All of the entrants completed our online Enterprise for All course (www.school.centrinvest.ru), and so now we have 2,500 future entrepreneurs.”

This is the twelfth year that the Endowment Fund for Education and Science in the SFD and Center-invest Bank have run an open scholarship competition for undergraduate and postgraduate students in southern Russia. More than 12,000 students have entered the competition since it began, and 2,900 scholarships have been awarded.

This year the organisers expanded the list of eligible institutions, increased the number of scholarships to 365, and amended the entry criteria. In total, 2,500 undergraduate and postgraduate students from 13 higher education institutions in southern Russia entered the 2014 competition, including, for the first time, students from the Institute of Business Administration and Law.

The competition judges have traditionally assessed the applicants on their academic achievements, their level of civic engagement, and their entrepreneurial potential. This year, in their final deliberations, the judges also took into account the applicants’ scores for the online Enterprise for All course.

Although most of the entries came from the Rostov region, Krasnodar Krai and the Volgograd region were also well represented, and accordingly award ceremonies were held in Krasnodar and Volgograd. At all three ceremonies, a jazz orchestra provided musical entertainment.