Young Managers’ School is an education project giving 100 students every year an opportunity for professional retraining for the “State and Municipal Governance” specialty in colleges and universities, simultaneously designing group project that would help the region develop. The training result is a pool of people with professional competences required to replace managerial and governance positions in the government bodies, as well as new ideas and solutions for the main area of the regional socio-economic development.

The Young Managers’ School project (hereinafter the Project) is open for all Russian citizens under 30 years of age, residing permanently in the region, with a higher education and total job experience at least 2 years (except for the winners of “Manage!” National youth management Cup).

The first stage of the project involves selection of candidates providing the required documents package.

The second stage includes competitive procedures involving evaluations of the candidates’ professional and personal qualities based on objective professionally significant criteria, and detection of those fittest for the Project. This stage is based around the regional education institutions involved in the Project doing the following:

1) Testing the participants’ knowledge of the fundamentals of Russian law;

2) Comprehensive evaluation of managerial competences;

3) Evaluation of the applicants’ personal qualities and traits.

The third stage is training for 100 students enrolled for the Project after the competitive procedures. The training is done in the regional universities and colleges participating in the Project. The training stage involves theoretical and hands-on parts, including:

- getting knowledge and competences in the state and municipal governance field;

- assembling students into project teams in order to prepare graduation projects focusing on solving regional socio-economic problems;

- assigning mentors from the education institution and the regional executive body responsible for the policy in the graduation project’s field;

- students’ visits to the regional and municipal executive bodies, institutions and organizations of various ownership forms in order to collect and analyze data required for their graduation projects.

The Project concludes with public defense of the students’ graduation projects at the seat of the regional Government with the heads of executive and municipal governance bodies acting as a committee of experts evaluating the projects. The main criteria for the project evaluation are:

- social efficiency (contribution to solving socially significant issues);

- economic efficiency and financial feasibility;

- conformance to the requirements set for the project Описание (the project detail level, the correlation between the project’s goals and objectives, its implementation method, and the expected results);

- the issues the project is dedicated to being within the scope of the regional or municipal executive bodies’ powers;

- the level of the stakeholders’ involvement in the project implementation.

Stage four. After successful defense of the graduation project each participant is handed a graduation (professional retraining) diploma and the Young Managers’ School project participant’s certificate. The most successful and distinguished students get recommendation letters from the Saratov regional government suggesting they be included into the talent pools of the regional executive and local government bodies, as well as into the regional managerial talent pool, as the law provides.

Furthermore, the Young Managers’ School implementation includes official Project opening and closing ceremonies with the Saratov Governor, heads of executive and municipal bodies, public associations, private companies, regional media, etc. all in attendance. At the closing ceremony the Governor and all guests are presented with the best graduation projects rated the highest by the committee members.