From the first days of its work, Rinat Akhmetov Foundation pays special attention to education issues. As in its work in other areas, the Foundation tried to bring the world’s leading practices into the educational environment of Ukraine, set trends for years to come. To accomplish these tasks, in 2007 Rinat Akhmetov Foundation launched “Modern Education” program.
Initially, the program was focused on educational projects in the field of digital journalism, because it is in the media that changes occur rapidly and at the same time affect each consumer of information. The projects of the program integrated the world’s best examples and practices of mass communications into Ukrainian society and at the same time transformed the education system in Ukraine.
The program started with “Digital Future Journalism” project. Rinat Akhmetov Foundation helped Ukrainian journalism move from the Soviet school to world-class media standards. More than 150 journalists and editors from 68 national and regional media became students of the project, who were trained in new practical knowledge and skills in the area of multimedia journalism.
The best students of the project completed an internship in the USA and Great Britain, visited the editorial offices of the world’s leading media: New York Times, National Geographic, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Telegraph etc. The editors were able to adopt new methods of work from western colleagues and improve the quality of their own media product.
In 2008, thanks to another project, “Doctoral Program in Mass Communications”, the first doctoral program in Ukraine was created, which was based on the philosophy of postgraduate education, typical for Western countries.
At that time, not a single university graduated from doctoral students in the European sense of the word in Ukraine, and the Foundation, together with the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, launched a pilot project for the transition of higher education to a three-stage system: bachelor – master – doctorate. The first doctoral students studied under the project in “Journalism” and “Sociology” specialties.
In 2011–2014, the project “Digital Media for Universities” was implemented jointly with the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”. It was aimed at creating quality higher education in journalism that meets the needs of new media.
Under the project, a curriculum for teaching modern knowledge in the field of multimedia journalism was created, consisting of eight training modules and covering all the necessary aspects for a journalism teacher (methods of teaching multimedia journalism, how to write texts for various platforms, how to work with audio and video editing packages, how build work in a converged edition).
Rinat Akhmetov Foundation annually selected ten teachers from Ukrainian universities, faculties or departments of journalism and sent them to advanced training courses. The trainers of the project participants were teachers of the world’s leading universities and media schools, as well as practicing journalists from Ukraine, the USA, Great Britain and Spain.
The project contributed to the creation of strong schools of journalism education in leading Ukrainian universities and allowed the start of mass training of journalists who meet the modern requirements of the media sphere.
In 2020, when the whole world was faced with the problem of coronavirus and entire countries introduced quarantine and self-isolation, the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation launched several distance-learning projects. Together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation, an educational series “Quarantine: Online Services for Teachers” was created. A series of videos presented the most popular online learning platforms in accessible language: Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Zoom, Class Dojo, Classtime, Viber etc. The advantages and disadvantages of each were discussed in detail – and this was a great help for teachers and students who had never previously taken part in lessons while sitting at home. The series has received over 500 thousand views.
– The support of Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for the implementation of this project was super-timely. The Foundation responded very quickly to the relevance of this topic for teachers. Moreover, it helped with all the organizational issues. Without its help, we would not have been able to bring this project to life so soon, – said Valeria Ionan, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation for European Integration.
Then, the Foundation, together with FC Shakhtar and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, launched the educational series “Digital Physical Education for Schoolchildren with the Participation of Sports Stars”. The hosts of the project were the players of the Donetsk club and the national team of Ukraine Andriy Pyatov and Serhiy Kryvtsov, as well as the stars of the humorous project “Mamahohotala Show” Yevhen Yanovich and Oleg Maslyuk, who is also the ambassador of Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The topics of the online lessons were very diverse, from the secrets of warm-up and squatting rules to yoga and e-sports.
– Online classes like this are needed more than ever. We need to keep fit and try to motivate people to do it. Because sport is health, immunity strengthening. Moreover, in the current situation, immunity is the most important thing, – said FC “Shakhtar” captain Andriy Pyatov. “Digital Physical Education” has gathered over 1 200 000 views on the platforms of the Foundation, the Ministry of Digital Transformation and FC “Shakhtar”.
Especially for doctors working with lung ventilators and everyone who is interested in this topic, Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Association of Anesthesiologists of Ukraine, created the series “COVID-19: what you need to know about the operation of lung ventilators”. This review series in a mini-interview format explains how ventilators work, talks about the functionality of modern models of this equipment, gives an idea of how a person feels when they are connected to the device, what doctors do with the patient and why.
– Thanks to the series, the doctor does not need to study multivolume instructions of about 800 pages; you can watch a 10-15-minute professionally filmed movie about this with the participation of an expert anesthesiologist. This makes it much easier to master the new equipment, – said Sergey Dubrov, the President of the Association of Anesthesiologists of Ukraine. The series about the operation of lung ventilators has been watched over 185 000 times.
Later, the Foundation, together with the Ministry of Health and the Association of Anesthesiologists of Ukraine, held an online conference for doctors working with lung ventilation devices. It was a three-hour webinar, during which leading experts from the Ministry of Health shared with doctors of public hospitals the world’s best experience in the treatment of COVID-19 and the nuances of working with the latest ventilator models.
More than 800 doctors from all regions of Ukraine took part in the conference, but in practice, the webinar helped to master the latest lung ventilators and the most progressive methods of treating the virus to a much larger number of specialists. The course has been made publicly available. It has been viewed about 20,000 times.
– The Foundation helps us not only with various devices, medicines, but also to educate our respected colleagues and learn something from them, ” said Olga Golubovskaya, one of the webinar experts, Honored Doctor of Ukraine, Professor, Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases of NMU named after A.A. Bogomolets.
The Foundation plans to hold new webinars and create new educational projects. In particular, in the near future, a training series will be created for candidates for adoptive parents.
Video – series “Quarantine: Online Services for Teachers”: https://www.youtube.com/embed/vOF2PK4Pu8M
Video – series “Digital Physical Education for Schoolchildren with the Participation of Sports Stars”: https://www.youtube.com/embed/JMAZDykGF_4
Video – series “COVID-19: What You Need to Know About the Operation of Lung Ventilators”: https://www.youtube.com/embed/UHyyqtCYISk
Video conferences: https://www.youtube.com/embed/KqaEqu9ZFT4?rel=0
Source: https://akhmetovfoundation.org/ru/news/15-rokiv-fondu-rinata-ahmetova-osvitni-proekty