The Nenets Boarding School opened in 1964, in Naryan Mar, the main town of the Nenets Autonomous Area. Today it provides room, board and schooling for 250 students including orphaned and neglected children, children whose parents work as nomadic reindeer breeders, or children from remote tundra settlements with no school. The students are ethnically diverse, but the majority (61%) is Nenets.

The Nenets Autonomous Area is located at a considerable distance from central Russia, and, according to the statistics, rural student have practically no access to personal computers in their homes. Consequently, the school has to play the key role in equipping students with basic computer skills and information literacy. In 2007, the Nenets Boarding School won the contest for implementing innovative technologies, sponsored by the high-profile national project “Education.”

The school’s IDEA Center is located on the library’s premises. It is an information and resource center, complete with modern IT equipment, Internet access and a multi-branch collection of materials including electronic documents and CD-ROMs. The IDEA Center provides all the necessary facilities for holding computer-based lessons or hosting seminars and workshops for teachers and students. All the librarians here are qualified to organize and facilitate computer training courses.

Hopefully, the IDEA Project will also enable Nenets boarding school graduates to overcome psychological challenges common for people used to living in remote and isolated spaces, teaching them to build contact networks with new people and make full use of benefits of modern civilization. It will help the children apply their knowledge and skills in their current and further studies, expand their circle of interaction, and make their post-graduation adaptation much easier, enabling them to say, proudly: “My little province is the center of the universe!”