On 25 October, Chernivtsi hosted events of the Together We Learn & Grow communication campaign, dedicated to the EU’s support for children and young people in times of war. The event was attended by the EU Ambassador to Ukraine, Katarina Mathernova.

In Chernivtsi, Ms Mathernova met with students and faculty of the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University to discuss the EU’s support for Ukrainian higher education institutions, the opportunities for students offered by the EU’s Erasmus+ programme, and the prospects for education cooperation between the EU and Ukraine. The EU Ambassador also held a press conference at the university.

As part of the Together We Learn & Grow campaign, the University also hosted a motivational lecture ‘Education for the Post-War Development of Ukraine’ held by Liliia Hrynevych, Vice-Rector of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and former Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine. In addition, university teachers and experts from Erasmus+ Ukraine took part in a discussion on Building a Common European Future. A mobile exhibition of the campaign, opened on the territory of the University’s Sydor Vorobkevych Park, featured various information about the EU’s support for young Ukrainians during the war.

On 30 October, Katarina Mathernova, the EU Ambassador to Ukraine and Oksen Lisovyi, Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine paid a joint visit to the Sofiivsko-Borshchahivskyi Lyceum as part of the Together We Learn & Grow communication campaign. They spoke to teachers and students and handed over 1,100 art and computer science textbooks printed with EU funding.

The Sofiyivsko-Borshchahivsky Lyceum is a modern and vibrant school, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Students welcomed guests in five European languages: English, Polish, Spanish, French and German.

The night before the event, a Russian airstrike hit a residential building in Kharkiv, killing an 11-year-old boy. The Ambassador mentioned this when addressing the students.

To ensure the schooling is one of the areas of EU support for education. The EU is helping to build and modernise shelters, and since the start of the war, tens of thousands of laptops and one and a half million textbooks have been delivered to students and teachers. The EU and its Member States have provided 380 buses to Ukrainian schools, and the EU is also helping to implement a school feeding programme.

In October, the results of an initiative to provide 100 grants of up to EUR10,000 to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises were presented. The programme targeted companies with the innovative capabilities and export potential.

The initiative was funded by the EU and the German government, and implemented by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) in partnership with the EasyBusiness think tank. According to the conference participants, it has proved to be extremely popular with MSMEs. As many as 1128 companies applied for 100 grants, which came as a surprise to the organisers.

Here are some other figures announced at the conference. 77 of the 100 grantees selected under the programme are from the manufacturing sector. 58 are run by women, 70 have never applied for grant support before, and 16 are relocated companies.

One of them is NeverDark, which had to move from Kyiv to Chernivtsi in March 2022. It produces fireplaces for urban homes, including for export.

Ecopan makes energy-efficient houses. According to Olha Romanenko, its co-founder, at the beginning of the great war, they were faced with the urgent need to increase exports.

To promote their products, however, they needed to engage in marketing, for which they previously lacked the money. The EU4Business grant helped them with this.

Supporting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises has been one of the EU’s priorities in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion. Last year, the EU Delegation ran a ‘Together, We Are Resilient.Together, We are Europe’ communication campaign, aimed at informing businesses about EU support and how to access it.

A series of four workshops on ensuring inclusivity in reconstruction was organised by The League of the Strong NGO in October. Topics covered included accessibility policy in strategic documents and at further stages – from the terms of reference to commissioning, tools and approaches that can ensure barrier- free communities.

The training was supported by the EU and the International Renaissance Foundation as part of the European Renaissance of Ukraine project. The workshops were attended by representatives of local governments and NGOs, as well as activists.

The League of the Strong believes that now is the time to talk about barrier-free reconstruction. Despite the war, projects are being planned, funded, and implemented. At the same time, we are talking about reconstruction in a broad sense: communities are modernising infrastructure, expanding service delivery spaces; the need for barrier-free accessibility also arises when arranging housing for IDPs, creating recreational areas, shelters, and social service facilities, especially given the increasing number of veterans and people with disabilities in communities.

Viktoriia Koliuda, Chief Specialist of the Organisation Department and Barrier-Free Accessibility Coordinator of the Shevchenkivskyi District State Administration in Kyiv, says that she found the workshops that discussed various tools and approaches to integrating the needs of all population groups particularly useful.

Violetta Kochishvili, a social activist from Pervomaisk, Mykolaiv region, is a wheelchair user.

The workshops were run by Volodymyr Vysotskyi, Accessibility Expert at The League of the Strong NGO. He says that in preparing the training, they took into account requests from communities and the challenges they face in implementing accessibility policies.

Specialists from seven Ukrainian district heating companies, as well as representatives of local authorities and a number of central institutions, took part in a week-long tour of the German capital Berlin and Lublin, Poland. They got to know the work of local heat and power companies, studied their experiences, and exchanged a lot with colleagues.

The tour was organised by the Ecoclub NGO and the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) as part of the EU- funded project “Closing the Loop: A Just Energy Transition Designed by Cities and Regions”.

In Berlin in particular, Ukrainian heat and power engineers visited a number of local heat producers (BEW, BTB) and met with representatives of the German Energy Agency (DENA), the District Heating Department of the German Ministry of Energy and Environmental Protection (BMWK), and the German Association for Energy Efficiency in Heating, Cooling and Cogeneration (AGFW). They discussed the regulatory environment and conditions for the sustainable development of district heating in the EU and Germany, the legal framework, and instruments for financing enterprises. They also discussed future challenges related to the transition to renewable energy sources.

In Lublin, the participants met with representatives of the district heating company (LPEC) and the municipality to discuss issues related to the implementation of European decarbonisation requirements in Poland. They also visited a local biomass CHP plant.

Ruslan Pohrebniak, Chief Engineer of the Zhytomyr Heat and Power Company of the Zhytomyr City Council, was one of the participants of the tour. He says it was extremely interesting to visit Polish and German companies.

Ruslan Pohrebniak believes that it is quite possible for Ukraine to adopt the Polish and German experiences seen during the tour. He himself has made useful contacts with local experts.

The tour helped the participants to understand why this industry is successful in Poland and Germany, why companies are developing, and the quality of services is improving, the Ecoclub NGO points out.

The Bereza community in Sumy Oblast is located just 20 kilometres from the border with Russia. Since the beginning of the Great War, many people have left the area, leaving only shops. In March 2022, the community was partially occupied.

For the past six months, the Nova Energia NGO has been helping the Bereza community to overcome difficulties and even despondency as part of a project to build the capacity of the local government and improve the skills of community residents. The project was implemented with the support of the EU and the International Renaissance Foundation.

11 training sessions were held in the community. Much of the work was to help the community prepare their own projects for further funding.

According to the Nova Energia NGO two problems were initially identified. The first was a lack of confidence in the possibility of obtaining funding due to the proximity to the Russian border, which had a significant impact on the desire to develop projects. And since the community had been spared significant destruction, they also believed that they had no ‘need’ to attract funding.

The project team helped the community to overcome these internal barriers.

Another significant problem addressed by the project was the use of digital technologies and the publication of information in open data format.

In October, a chatbot was launched in the community to enable communication between the local government and residents. Another practical project outcome was a change in approach to household waste management.