Education, Safety, Partnerships: Summer Results and Plans for Autumn

The “Public Resources and Initiatives” Charity Foundation sums up the summer and outlines the next steps. Our focus remains unchanged: support for veterans and women veterans, families of the fallen, people with disabilities, IDPs, and children in frontline and affected communities — through education, rehabilitation, safe spaces, and partnerships.

Our goals and how we achieve them:

• Strengthening community resilience: we develop local volunteering, establish interaction between regions, and launch joint initiatives.
• Creating opportunities for development and employment: business school, educational programs, vocational courses, mentoring, assistance with employment and starting a business.
• Caring for safety and dignity: children’s shelters and child-friendly spaces, psychological support, “do no harm” in all interventions.
• Working transparently: planning, reporting, procurement, and partnerships — openly and by the rules.

Key events of the season

• Educational opportunities for veterans. The first wave of short vocational courses has been launched (since July): “Basics of Massage,” “Nail Service,” “Basics of Accounting.” In parallel, group and individual consultations are taking place in communities. Business Schools with mentoring support and public defense are ongoing. The activities are implemented within the project “Reintegration of Veterans and Women Veterans through the Creation of Educational Opportunities: Ours for Ours.”

• Children’s shelters — “Treasure Shelters.” The arrangement of four bomb shelters for children in the Nikopol area, Kryvyi Rih area, and Synelnykove area with the necessary equipment and materials has been completed.

• Humanitarian support for families. During the summer, 900 families of Heroes who were killed, those missing, and those in captivity received food certificates in the Kryvyi Rih area, Kherson region, Kharkiv region, Nikopol, and Dnipropetrovsk region.

• Forum of Ideas and Opportunities in Chernivtsi. Veterans/women veterans and their family members, together with the authorities, the employment service, the university, and communities, discussed practical solutions — from education and reintegration to employment and starting one’s own business. The first joint steps and the framework “learning → mentoring → employment” have been formed.

• Analytical work. The study “Map of Opportunities for Veterans/Women Veterans and Their Family Members in the Chernivtsi Region” was presented — the existing services and assistance routes were systematized, which formed the basis of the programs.

• Partnerships for action. Memorandums of cooperation were signed with the Department for Veterans Policy of the Chernivtsi Regional State Administration, the Chernivtsi Regional Council, Yurii Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University, the Chernivtsi Regional Employment Center, and the Magala Territorial Community.

• International and interregional synergy. We are developing cross-border STEM initiatives for schools and youth, preparing joint applications with Ukrainian and European partners. A joint round table with Romanian partners was held in Bucharest — on historical memory, countering authoritarianism, and democratic development; a further discussion in Chernivtsi in November has been agreed.

• The voice of Ukraine in the world. The Foundation, as the coordinating organization of the Eastern European Network of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (regional coordinator Nataliia Nechayeva-Yuriichuk), was represented at a meeting in Amman (Jordan).

What’s next

In autumn — strengthening the network actions of ZGURT-UA, new streams of vocational courses and mentoring, public defense of business plans and announcement of grant winners, joint events for veterans and families, psychological support, trainings and consultations in communities. We also plan public events for sharing experience and presenting practices that work.

Start of a new project from UN Women. The Foundation has joined the implementation of an initiative that strengthens women’s participation in the processes of recovery and community development, and support in volunteering activities.

We are preparing new partnerships and joint projects, working on grant applications with Ukrainian and international donors. We are open to dialogue with communities, NGOs, business, and universities — we invite you to join ZGURT-UA and the Foundation’s initiatives. Together we can scale up assistance faster and strengthen community resilience.

P.S. Every one of our actions matters. And every word as well.

Donate to the Foundation’s account — we will help more already today.