The ceremony of the countdown clock’s start devoted to the World Festival of Youth and Students took place in Vorobyovy Gory.
The representatives of three generations of international festivals (1957, 1985 and 2017) gathered on the stage. The audience welcomed Chairperson of the National Preparatory Committee for WFYS and Chairperson of the National Youth Council of Russia — Grigory Petushkov, Coordinator for the preparation of WFYS and Director of Rospatriotcentr — Ksenia Razuvaeva, Acting Head of the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs — Alexei Palamarchuk, Public Festival Ambassador and national artist of Russia, film director and writer — Stanislav Govorukhin, President of the World Federation of Democratic Youth — Nikas Papadimitriou.
The clock countdown was started by veteran of World War II — Zoya Smirnova, silver volunteer of WFYS 2017 and member of the Festival happened in 1957.
In the anticipation of the forthcoming Festival young people across the country have decided to give it another symbol — the palm opened for the world, which represents five inhabited continents of the Earth, whose representatives will attend the festival in Russia. Using “opened palms” the guests of the event launched «a relay race of greetings», which will return to the guests of the Festival in the future.
In Vorobyovy Gory the relay will go into the virtual space, where the rule of six handshakes will be proved, that will confirms that all people are united by five people who know each other.
In social networks, everyone will be able to pass the relay on, and in a year it will unite the whole world.
