A night at the movies is a treat everyone should get to enjoy.

Friends on the Streets, a Moscow charity organization, has set up a cinema to screen movies for the city’s homeless, Al Jazeera reported. The group hopes in addition to providing relaxation and entertainment for attendees, the summer events will promote a larger awareness.

“More than anything we have a dream to change attitudes towards homeless people, because they are often abused and mistreated, and it is very hard for them to live,” said Natalia Markova, a volunteer with Friends on the Streets, according to Al Jazeera.

Films will be shown twice a month free of charge, with tea and snacks provided at each screening, BBC reported. The audience votes to decide which movie will play, with the cinema’s premiere last weekend being “something good, old-fashioned and Soviet,” Markova told BBC.

In addition to the monthly movies, Friends on the Streets has also developed sports events and a makeshift beauty salon for the city’s less fortunate.

Though these efforts have been met with some resistance as, according to a Moscow Times report, some argued that the focus should be on providing resources like food and shelter, smaller initiatives like this one also can positively impact people’s well-being.

“For most people there’s nothing special about going to a movie or a hairdresser,” Andrei Besshtanko, deputy head of City Hall’s department of social security, told the news outlet. “But for those who have spent a year on the streets it helps them to remember that they’re human.”

The cinema, which is set up in the center of Moscow, will show movies throughout the summer.

Stray Dogs Ride Moscow’s Trains for Food

Many of Moscow’s stray dogs actually live in the suburbs and take the subway downtown daily to forage for food. While on the train they do normal commuting stuff like napping and listening for their stop to be announced. They find seats and sometimes remind one another where to get off the train.

Once their workday begins they go looking for easy targets like people eating street food and children. They employ a number of tactics to get fed based on the mark. They bark at noshing adults to alarm them into accidentally dropping their food. They rest their heads on the laps of kids and flash them their cutest puppy dog eyes. When the day is done they head back to the suburbs and rest up for the next day’s adventures.

The phenomenon is attributed to survival-based evolution. Researcher Andrei Poyarkov has been observing the strays for nearly 30 years. During this time he’s noticed they develop wolf-like characteristics and increased intelligence over the course of their lives. They also adopt a pack structure that favours “brain over brawn” with the smartest dog becoming the alpha of the group.

source: Geobeats

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