Mari schoolchildren have made a website about their village, where there is almost no Internet

Schoolchildren from Mari-El with the support of the educational project "Circle" have created a website for their village Sardayal. They told about their school, about the Mari culture, nature and language, and also invited everyone to visit.

The project "Circle Tour" is a temporary web programming school in ten Russian cities, it was organized in 2017 by four programming teachers. The creators of the project want to create an all-Russian online platform for remote education of teenagers. At the beginning of 2018, thanks to the "Circle", the first village website in Russia was created by schoolchildren from the Eye in the Tambov region.

The teachers of the "Circle" came to Sardayal in March, when the night temperature reached -35 degrees and a stoker came every four hours to melt the stove with coal. The training was supposed to take place in a wooden building of one of the oldest schools in the country, but there was no Internet signal.

The content of the site is translated into English and Mari. Children from Sardayal told about their school, opened in 1884. During the rain, the roof leaks here, it is very cold in a strong wind, there is not enough space in the gym, and there are not enough books in the library. The creators of the site worry that if the school closes, the village will die, and hope for the construction of a new building.

According to schoolchildren, their main problem is the lack of stable 3G. Among them there are those who are interested in esports, take places in English Olympiads and lead a channel about Minecraft on YouTube. In order to hold Counter Strike competitions with schoolchildren from neighboring villages, learn other languages, and also render and upload videos stably, they need a good Internet connection.

The site also tells about the history and nature of Sardayal, the Mari language, national costumes and cuisine (there is even a special recipe for pancakes). In the section "Guide to Sardayal", schoolchildren advise what to do in the village to guests: for example, listen to Mari songs, collect blue clay from ravines, go on a tour of springs and ravines, listen to legends about evil spirits and seven sacred groves.

The visit to Sardayal can be timed to the Tatar-Mari bonfire "Friendship of Peoples" or to the summer intercultural festival with music, a gastronomic section, as well as master classes in design, robotics and programming.