More than 300 top students of Ukraine participated in the 3rd Youth Forum of ZAVTRA.UA scholarship program

The 3rd Youth Forum of the nationwide scholarship program Zavtra.UA initiated by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, held from 17 to 20 May in Kyiv, has ended. Over 300 Zavtra.UA-2009/10 scholarship holders from all regions of Ukraine joined the event.

One of the key tasks of the Forum is to form a network of socially responsible youth that unites the best Ukrainian students, motivate their social activity and engage gifted Ukrainian youth in pubic initiatives promoting development of our country and society.

As a result, the scholarship holders supported by professional coaches, representatives from business and public organizations as well as participants of Aspen-Ukraine project, developed over 20 social projects in the areas of culture, education, environment, healthcare, human rights and etc. Three selected projects will receive administrative and financial support from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

During the award ceremony on 19 May, the scholars presented the winning projects, including: “Child of the month” project that is aimed at shifting society’s attitude to handicapped children and intends to screen a social film with the same title throughout Ukraine’s universities followed by a discussion; “Art workshop” project with a concept of making Ukrainian art popular with children, and to achieve this, the scholars plan to organize master classes on all types of national craftsmanship in schools and summer camps; “Our tomorrow” – a socio-educational project aimed at improvement of academic success and motivation to learn in orphans.

This year, the Forum was joined by politicians, business representatives and public figures who took part in the award ceremony and meetings with students where they shared their success stories and made suggestions on what to do in order to achieve high results in life. Among them were Arseniy Yatsenyuk, leader of the “Front for changes” political party; Dmytro Shymkiv, General Director of “Microsoft Ukraine”; Iryna Lysenko, General director of Novy Channel; Kyrylo Dmitriev, President of “Icon Private Equity”; Tomas Fiala, Managing Director of “Dragon Capital”; Margarita Sichkar, restaurateur and founder of charity foundation; Andriy Kulikov, host of the “Svoboda slova” TV show; Victor Pinchuk, founder of Zavtra.UA program and other.

Addressing the scholarship holders, Victor Pinchuk stated: “I would like to call on you to be global citizens. When you think of Ukraine, you must think of the whole world. Take the best the world can offer you and you will become worthy citizens of this country and you will be able to bring results. You have to talk and think about what happens in the world and not confine yourself to some local problems”.

Greeting the winners of the competition, Arseniy Yatsenyuk commented: “When I say there is future, I clearly understand that the future has gathered here. And the fact you have this small victory is very important for your further development, your life and your future. Each of you must aim at the victory. Each of you must become a personality. I believe that here we have fully formed individuals. To change the country, we don’t need millions of people. We need the ones with energy, strength and desire”.

Dmytro Shymkiv: “My key impression is that Ukraine has active and progressive students who want to make changes, want to live in this country and develop it. This is interesting, because I understand that they mature, establish companies and businesses, they begin to work actively in society and life. They have ideas, they have questions, they want to know where to move forward, how to develop and what are the opportunities for self-fulfillment.”

This year’s competition to participate in Zavtra.UA scholarship program from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation was held for the fourth time. Nearly 1500 students from over 70 graduation schools of Ukraine with the fourth level of accreditation joined the contest. As a result of the three selection tours of the competition, 318 students became the program scholarship holders, 78 of them received the scholarship for the second time and 11 – for the third time. The majority of the winner students are from Kyiv (88), Kharkiv (29) and Lviv (25) and studying in Kyiv National Shevchenko University (39), “Lviv Politechnics” National University (20) and “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” National University (18). The most popular areas for the competition papers were “Economics and management” (45 works), “Electronics” (33 works) and “Philology and journalism” (24 works). All winners of Zavtra.UA are to receive UAH 942 monthly scholarship during the year.