Zavtra.UA scholarship holders present their project “The Moon’s Child” in Kyiv to raise awareness for disabled people

On December 14, 2010, Zavtra.UA scholarship holders and independent producer Maryna Shkuropat will present their human rights project “The Moon’s Child” aimed at raising awareness for people with special needs. The event encompasses a screening of the “The Moon’s Child” film and a press conference, presenting the outcome of the project that has been implemented in eight Ukrainian cities.

The press conference and film show will take place at the Kyiv National Pedagogical Dragomanov University (9 Pyrohova Street), room 340, starting at 14:30.
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Besides raising awareness, the project also aims at encouraging networking among students, public institutions and NGOs dealing with this issue. The ultimate goal is to contribute to the inclusion of disabled people in social life all over Ukraine.

“I wish that we stop being afraid of stepping over the boundaries of our own world and start communicating with the people who, by our own or society’s standards, are thought to be inferior to us”, emphasized the initiator of the project Maryna Shkuropat.

So far, the project has been implemented in eight Ukrainian universities in Severodonetsk, Luhansk, Uzhgorod, Ostroh, Khmelnytsky, Zaporizhzhia and Lviv. In addition to the viewing of the film and public discussions about the rights of the disabled in Ukraine, initial data on the problems faced by people with special needs, including access to education and equal conditions for personal development, was gathered over the course of the project.

The “Moon’s Child” project was developed by scholarship holders of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation’s Zavtra.UA scholarship program from 10 Ukrainian universities. They presented the idea at the 3rd Zavtra Youth Forum on May 17-20, 2010 in Kyiv. /p>

The film “The Moon’s Child” (Il Figlio della luna, 2007) by Italian director Gianfranco Albano is based on the true story of an outstanding scientist Fulvio Frisone, who lives in Sicily and works at a university. The film won prizes at a number of international television festivals in 2007, among them the AMADE-UNESCO Prize in Monte Carlo, the Golden Magnolia in Shanghai and the Golden Olive Award for the best feature movie in Bar, Montenegro.

For more information on the project, please visit www.moonchild.org.ua