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When a Woman Helps a Woman in Need
Oleksandra Kyrychenko, the Head of the Union for People with Disabilities, is a highly respected and well-known elderly woman in her village of Lyutenski Budyshcha, which is in Poltava region. Her villagers look up to her, but her husband does not. For many years, Oleksandra had been returning home not knowing how she would be greeted by her husband, or where she would be spending the night – at her own home or her sister’s. Over time, Oleksandra had lost all hope, but the tide finally turned when her friend, Hanna Skarha, invited her to participate in a seminar to learn about legal rights and protection. More ...

Ukrainian Media Partnership Launches a New Campaign to promote Safer Sex Practices
At the end of November the Ukrainian Media Partnership to Combat HIV/AIDS project, supported by USAID and implemented by IREX in collaboration with Transatlantic Partners against AIDS (TPPA), held a Press Club for Kyiv journalists called StopAIDS: Affects Everyone. The event publicized collaborative efforts between government, business and non-governmental sectors in fighting the HIV/AIDS as well as presented a new awareness campaign on safer sex practices. Alla Sherbynska, Director of the Ukrainian AIDS Center, Anna Zemskova, Editor in Chief of Cosmopolitan, Luc Chenier, Marketing and PR Director of the MTV Ukraine TV-Channel, Kostynatyn Ryzhkov, Ukrainian Media Partnership Combat HIV/AIDS Manager, participated at the event. More ...

HIV-Positive Mothers Deliver Healthy Babies
Fear, anger, irritation and frustration – these are but few emotional determinants attributed to most of the young mothers who discover their HIV-positive status during their pregnancy. The biggest concern for an HIV-positive woman in the antenatal period is whether she can deliver a HIV-negative baby. “My husband and I would be heartbroken if our baby were born HIV-infected. If we die, no one will adopt our baby should it be HIV-positive, and no one will care for it the way it deserves,” said Ludmila Syomkina (name changed), who is HIV-positive and admitted to Maternity # 2 in Simferopol for an elective C-section. More ...

Comic Characters Promote Ukrainian Pension Reform
Ukraine is a country with a quickly aging population and fast growing pension burdens. According to offi cial statistics, Currently, the contributions of 100 workers support are 90 pensioners. The situation is expected to worsen in the coming decades. The only solution to this problem is to give Ukrainians the ability to hold both state and private pensions. In 2003, the Parliament of Ukraine passed a Pension Law that will implement a new three-pillar pension system. Informing people of the new great opportunity has become a top priority for the Government of Ukraine. More ...

Supply-Side Philanthropy: Building on the Impulse to Give
When Volodymyr Slobodonyak, an owner of a small print house in Cervonohrad (a small coal mining town in Western Ukraine), returned home from a seminar in Ukraine’s capital on social entrepreneurship, he immediately sought out Ilona Gudvoka, director of a local nonprofit, with a business proposition. What if they launched a new business whose profi ts could support Strumochuk? Strumochuk is a local nonprofit serving 170 people with intellectual disabilities and their family members. Gudvoka readily accepted, and with help from USAID’s Strengthening Civil Society Organizations Project (USAID/UCAN) the Social Company was born. More ...

Life Gets Brighter in Alchevsk
Poor street lighting is a common рroblem in many Ukrainian cities, and Alchevsk is not an exception. It is especially felt in the fall and winter. Elderly people tend not to go out on the street in the late hours unless it is urgent. Parents have to leave work earlier to pick up their kids who stay late at school or take additional classes. “I live on a main street, but even here, in the heart of the city, there were almost no working street lamps. If I needed to go to buy something in a store in the evening, I would wait until the next day,” says Lidiya Pikalova, an Alchevsk resident. More ...

Return to Life Gives a Second Chance
It’s one thing for a CSO to have an income-earning strategy and another to scale-up activities to increase impact and achieve financial sustainability. To do this, both technical and financial ongoing support is necessary. This means diversifying activities that build off each other and going beyond one-off financial infusions by connecting them with other CSOs or volunteers. In practice, this is tricky; but if it works - it’s a graceful solution. More ...

Alchevsk Public and Private Sectors Reps Learn about U.S. Waste Management Practices
Ten Alchevsk residents have just returned from a U.S. tour on waste management practices, sponsored by the USAID Community Connections Program, and are ready to help their hometown to implement them. The participants, who represented both Alchevsk’s private and public sectors, spent three weeks seeing for themselves how the creation, disposal and treatment of waste have entered the American national cultural consciousness. More ...

Koryukivka Mayor: "It's Important to Know Which Way You Go"
Koryukivka is a small town of nearly 13,500 residents in Chernihiv Oblast. It is the home of the Koryukivka Technical Paper Factory, a public corporation that claims to be Europe's largest wallpaper manufacturer. According to Koryukivka Mayor Ihor Matyukha, the factory has always helped the town in some way or other. This public-private collaboration has much intensified since September 2007, when the town adopted its Economic Development Strategic Plan drafted with assistance from the USAID LED project. More ...

NGOs and the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine Team up to Combat Human Trafficking
USAID/Ukraine works to build and fortify existing relationships and partnerships between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and state bodies to ensure a concerted national response to trafficking in human beings. The USAID’s Improvement of the System for Identification and Rehabilitation of Trafficking Victims among Deported Persons in Border Regions of Ukraine project engages NGOs and the State Border Guard Service (SBGS) of Ukraine to jointly address the problem of human trafficking. More ...

Entrepreneurship Support Fund Builds Souvenir Businesses
Praskovia Tanova, disabled from birth, had few job prospects in her hometown of Bolgrad in southern Ukraine. Craft-making had been her life-long hobby, but she had never considered it a viable career option until she read in a local newspaper about an organization that was training people to develop small businesses. Together with some friends from the Bolgrad Association of Disabled Persons, Praskovia attended the training. Later, she and her friends used what they learned to launch their own small business selling dolls and ceramics they made by hand. More ...

Willingness to Pay – a Litmus Test for Sustainability
Sustainability is the ultimate goal of any technical assistance project. There are various criteria to determine whether a project has been able to survive without USAID or other donor funding. Willingness to pay for services similar to those once developed under the project and delivered to other recipients free of charge can be one of them. In the spring of 2007, the Rivne Oblast State Administration approved an action plan to create the Rivne Regional Industrial Park. InvestInRivne, an agency established in 2005 to attract investments to the oblast, was put in charge of its implementation. More ...

E-Scissors for Red Tape
There are two things - the Internet and red tape - that are ubiquitous and thus stitch together the present-day globalized world, irrespective of ethnic, cultural, religious or other differences. And though the latter seems to be invincible, certain Internet applications, and other information and communication technologies (ICT) can at least ease bureaucratic procedures and help civil servants better serve citizens. More ...

Relief Nursery Helps Families at Risk
Sashko, 6, can count, knows the alphabet, and can write his first and last names. More ...

Hotline Helps Local Woman Protect Herself
Lyudmyla, a second-year law student, attended a seminar on trafficking in persons held at her university. More ...