The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation participated in annual conference of the European Foundation Centre (EFC), a leading platform for philanthropy in Europe. Among the main topics addressed by the EFC this year were philanthropy in the digital age and regional specifics of the work of charitable organisations.
“The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is not only a leader in national philanthropy but also part of the global philanthropic community, and since 2015 we have been members of the EFC. This gives us an opportunity to bring the world’s best practices in philanthropy to Ukraine, as well as to benchmark the Foundation’s practices against global trends, gain experience and share our experience”, said Natalia Yemchenko, a member of the Supervisory Board of the Foundation.
The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation is Ukraine’s largest charitable organisation that has been implementing national-level programmes and projects for more than 15 years. Thanks to Rinat Akhmetov, 5 million Ukrainians have survived during 15 years. And this is a unique scale of one person’s help, which has enormous value. The Foundation’s experience of rescuing people in armed conflict and emergency situations has so far no equal in Ukraine and many European countries. The Foundation is also involved in providing assistance at the level of social changes, and in creating online charity projects that are new to Ukraine – like the Digital Physical Education Lessons project that has been internationally recognized.
In the opinion of the conference participants, such activities are particularly important today, as the value of charitable organisations is growing fast.
“I consider charitable foundations play an extremely important role in the way our society moves forward, because they have the freedom of action and the means, the resources to bring in some very valuable innovative concepts, ideas. The foundations really want to do something good, to make a real contribution, to make the world a better place. And that is why it is so important to hold meetings to share our experiences and best practices, to get to know each other and to raise the big issues of our time, such as climate change, social disturbances or European cooperation. These are problems that we cannot solve on our own, alone. Thus, we need to find strong links, establish close partnerships to be able to work together on topics that are important to us,” pointed out Boris Marte, CEO of ERSTE Foundation.