Introduction. The article is based on the results of a survey conducted during the implementation of the project “MY VILLAGE: from cultural traditions to civic initiatives”. The project is a scaling up of the successful municipal practice of the museum and cultural center “House of Traditions” of the village of Parakino of the Bolshebereznikovsky district of the Republic of Mordovia to the district level. The relevance of the project is due to the dynamics and specifics of the sociocultural request of society, namely “search for oneself” through the growing interest in ancestry, culture and traditions, national cuisine, the demand for ecological, recreational and ethnographic tourism, which brings a person to “his village”, to the parental ...