People are always looking for communication, advice, friends or a soulmate. And Orthodox believers are no exception here. The Elitsa social network was created precisely for such people who want to build their lives on the foundations of the Christian faith and pray to God. And it doesn’t matter whether they go to church now, or are just thinking about it, looking closely and interested in everything that concerns Orthodox teaching.
Elitsa social network
Today this is the only social network created for Orthodox Christians. It has been around for about 5 years. Currently, more than 205 thousand people are registered in the network. The majority of users are in Russia - 75%, Ukraine and Belarus - 15%, and the rest of the world - 10%. Users from Russian diasporas in the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe and Greece are actively registering on the network.
Here people can:
- communicate with priests;
- find like-minded people;
- monitor life in the parish;
- find out news from the entire church.
The geography of the project is very wide. The pages of communities of churches not only of the Russian Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Church), but also of other canonical autonomous and self-governing Orthodox churches with which there is Eucharistic communion are registered on the network.
There are parishes:
- Russian Orthodox Church Abroad;
- Ukrainian;
- Polish;
- Hellasic;
- Cyprus;
- Serbian;
- Constantinople;
- Jerusalem;
- Georgian;
- Bulgarian;
- Antioch;
- Estonian;
- Moldavian;
- Belarusian Exarchate.
A large database of monasteries and churches of the Russian Orthodox Church has been collected and processed here. About 20 thousand active monasteries, cathedrals and temples are shown on the map. Each of them has their own page on the social network with all the functionality. This is a tangible benefit to the abbots of churches: a free, live, interactive site.
origin of name
The meaning of the word “elitsa” translated from Church Slavonic means “those who” or “all of you.” Recently it has begun to be used in ordinary speech. This happened because a site with that name appeared, or rather an Orthodox social network. A modern platform for strengthening ties between Orthodox people with the Church Slavonic name Elitsa is becoming increasingly popular.
Purpose of creating the project
The creators of the Elitsa project are a private initiative of a group of like-minded people, ordinary laymen, parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church. The project is intended to unite Orthodox people around the world, to develop and strengthen the parish community. The project is essentially a people's project.
Each network user contributes:
- Makes suggestions for functionality development.
- Draws attention to network problems. Suggests ways to solve them.
- Supports prayerfully.
- Provides financial assistance.
- Creates content.
The Orthodox network of Elitsa is a good example of how large complex things that are accomplished for the benefit of the church and people are raised together, by the whole world, that is, collectively. More than 50 priests, publicists, actors, psychologists, and lawyers take part in the development of the Orthodox social network. Among the network users there are famous theologians and missionaries.
Purpose of creation
Elitsa was created by a private group that gathered to implement one single idea - to unite all Orthodox Christians around the world and all parishes.
Elitsy are engaged in the creation of various projects for communication between Christians
The project can be called a folk project, because it was carried out by ordinary parishioners. The team consists of 25 people.
Website functions for parishioners
Elitsa's team employs 25 people. These are programmers, specialists in design, layout, testing, maintenance, moderators, support services, content managers, managers and employees of Elitsa service departments. Orthodox Christians from Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Estonia and Belarus work here. Users take a direct part in the development of the network.
Communication
Possessing a universal set of tools for conducting information, missionary, youth and social work in the parish, Elitsa’s social network helps strengthen the community and increase the flock.
On the pages of temples you can post:
- photo and video materials;
- news;
- announcements from rectors and parishioners;
- service schedule.
You can also highlight the activities of Sunday schools, youth, social and missionary ministries, and create parish communities of interest. All this is aimed at solving the most important church task - uniting and uniting people around the temple. Elitsy, through communication mechanisms, create conditions for the self-organization of the church community and the successful adaptation of new parishioners into it.
There are already registered users on the pages of more than 11 thousand churches - clergy and parishioners. Users of the site actively help in collecting information. Therefore, we can say with confidence that today Elitsy presents the most complete and reliable (in terms of coordinates, names of temples and their affiliation) map of the location of temples. The active participation of site visitors in collecting and providing information gives the network unity and inspires people's trust.
Familiarization with information
An official page of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill has been opened in Elitsy, to which all users are subscribed. Also, the accounts of 43 metropolitans, archbishops and bishops are registered on the social network. In total, more than a thousand clergy (1143 people) are registered in Elitsy.
They passed the moderator's check and verification, provided data confirming their rank. After which their pages were assigned the appropriate status. This eliminates the possibility of fake clergy accounts appearing online. On the pages of the site, two-way communication is established between parishioners and church clergy, and missionary activities are carried out.
Site visitors communicate:
- discuss various topics, publications;
- publish content (own or borrowed from other sites);
- create communities of interest;
- hold events.
The social network provides an excellent opportunity for communication, for parishioners of different churches to get to know each other, as well as for getting acquainted with various types of information regarding Orthodox doctrine, the activities of the church as a whole and individual parishes.
Participation in projects
The system includes 20 projects. Let's talk about the most popular and interesting, what each of them means.
First of all, these are daily video broadcasts with famous priests. Believers can subscribe to daily video meetings with Father Andrei Tkachev, Hieromonk Macarius, Artemy Vladimirov and other clergy.
The Elitsa Charitable Foundation deserves special attention, as it helps to unite efforts not only in prayer, but also to demonstrate unity in acts of mercy. Its creation was a logical continuation of the development of charitable activities on the social network.
All over the world, network users raised funds and sent humanitarian aid to Syria, where food and medicine were delivered to children. Books and church utensils were given to Christian monasteries.
There is an active participation in the restoration of monasteries. Support is provided to large families and people with disabilities. Since the start of its activities, more than 5,000 people have placed their trust in the foundation, and, therefore, took part in various charitable events.
The fund receives requests from site users for help in various difficult situations. In almost every case, support is provided to one degree or another. The direction of the foundation's activities related to church charity and works of mercy (for example, prison ministry, etc.) is developed jointly with priests.
Another Elitsa-notes service was created at the request of social network users. He helps people in different, sometimes remote corners of our or another country to seek prayer help in holy places - churches, monasteries through ordering requests. According to its operating technology, this service is an aggregator or postal and courier service, which allows you to create a demand order on a single portal, often to several monasteries at once and send it to its destination.
The social network also has a service for collecting information about Orthodox shrines. That’s what it’s called – Orthodox Shrines. It contains information about 5 thousand holy places. It is filled with the strength of users. You can both add and search information using different filters. The description of each shrine contains a photo, history, text content, and geodata.
