Meeting a famous person is always inspiring, especially for young people, who always seek someone to look up to – a good role model. Such meetings recently took place in KyiV: nearly 50 young women from all over Ukraine spoke with the US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer, the actress Natalia Sumska, the singer Anzhelika Rudnytska, the businesswoman Natalia Yaresko, Larysa Mudrak – a deputy chairperson at the National Council for TV and Broadcasting, and other well-known women. The meeting was a part of the program First Step Towards Success, which was initiated and backed by the Ukrainian Women’s Foundation and the US-Ukraine Foundation’s Community Partnership Program.
The idea of the contest is quite simple: to find the talented and successful young ladies with good leadership qualities, and use them for a noble cause, e.g., set up NGOs or start social projects which are useful to the community.
Everything starts with an essay-contest, in which students or school graduates describe the social projects they want to implement, or have already begun working on. Each year there are between 100 and 120 applicants, and nearly half of the authors become participants of the program. The goal of the contest is not merely to find young women leaders, but also to help them implement their projects. Each winner receives a certain sum of money for this, a mini-grant of sorts.
“My friend and I sent our applications on the last day, and then we found out that we won!” said Lidia Kozhevnikova, a grad student from Lutsk. “My program is about developing orphan’s social skills. It is not so much about financial assistance; a group of volunteers will organize all sorts of classes for the kids: painting, knitting… They will also organize games and contests for them. We are planning to visit the kids according to a schedule: for example, there will be weekly classes in arts, clothes design (making clothes for dolls), and so on.
“My friend is working on a different problem – an anti-abortion campaign. Basically, our tasks are intertwined: if young women do some thinking and prefer to give birth and assume responsibility for their babies, it will help solve the problem of orphans. That is why we united our efforts and created a website about these two problems. Also, we have made a pilot brochure on abortion. We are planning to disseminate it at maternity centers and units. The grant which we have won will be spent for publishing the brochure.”
Apart from the grants, girls are entitled to visit workshops throughout the year, where they will be taught how to continue working on their projects or develop their own NGOs. Over the five years of the project’s existence, such trainings have been attended by nearly 150 participants, each of them finding her own recipe for success.
According to the program’s coordinators, the project’s biggest reward is the success of each girl that takes part in it. After meeting famous women, and after the numerous leadership training sessions, they become more confident and ready to overcome any difficulties in order to achieve the goals they have set themselves. And they succeed.
Numerous participants win grants from the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine or some international foundations, some are invited to speak at international conferences, others become successful public figures, volunteer to work at summer camps for parentless children, or create projects within the framework of youth democracy. These young ladies are definitely leaders for themselves – and they must be leaders for their country, too.
