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11 April 2009 22:02

Ukraine 3000 Foundation Awards Third Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect All-Ukrainian Youth Competition Winners

April 11, 2009, the Kyiv Ukrainian House hosted the Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect National Youth Forum. The Forum is the final event of Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect All-Ukrainian Youth Competition, held by the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation for the third time.

Among the participants of the event were Head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukraine 3000 Foundation Kateryna Yushchenko, Minister of Ukraine for Family, Youth, and Sports Yuri Pavlenko, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Pavlo Poliansky, People’s Deputy of Ukraine, member of the Committee on Science and Education Lesia Orobets, Head of the MSI Office in Ukraine Irene Chen, Intel Educational Programs Director Tetiana Nanayeva, Head of the Board of Directors of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Oleksandr Maksymchuk, representatives of state and local government, the Academy of Sciences and Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, academia, public organizations, business, competition organizers, and over 400 young people from all Ukraine’s oblasts, participants of the Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect Competition.

The Forum’s organizers and partners are Ukraine 3000 Foundation, State Department for Intellectual Property, Gifted Child Institute, Gifted Youth Alliance, and other state and public institutions, working on the talented youth development and support.

The forum’s key subject is Forming Effective Mechanism for Social Support of the Intellectually Gifted Youth. Among the subjects touched upon by its participants are forming a nationwide system to support intellectually gifted youth, creating a civic monitoring system for implementing a national program to support gifted youth, and concrete proposals as for its modernization and development.

The forum participants also came forward with an initiative to create a periodical, The White Book of Youth Policy: How to Support Gifted Youth.

Addressing the audience, Head of the Board of Directors of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Oleksandr Maksymchuk recalled the competition’s history and pointed out its positive dynamics. Compared to the first competition, the number of participants has almost doubled. At present it is held in all Ukraine’s oblasts, having dozens of regional and national partners. “Our competition isn’t a remote test for erudition. We don’t play intellectual games with young people. We give to our contestants concrete applied questions, which are now urgent for the whole society, and more often than not we receive concrete answers,” Mr. Maksymchuk said.

Mr. Maksymchuk also outlined the competition’s priorities in terms of further development. First, it is improving the system of post-competition support for the participants, in part, trainings at the Foundation’s partner organizations and businesses; holding regular meetings for the most active participants, mostly in the form of educational schools; promoting business ideas, submitted to the contest, in the business sphere; supporting authors of social projects in their implementation. Secondly, the Foundation intends to extend the list of the competition’s regional and national financial partners, for which this support would become a part of their corporate social responsibility policy.

Besides, the Foundation has started to design a system of measures to promote the winners’ social status. To this end, in 2009 the Foundation has introduced the Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect Silver Badge of Honor to award young researchers aged under 35 for their attainments in intellectual activities and contribution into developing Ukraine’s intellectual potential.

In the final part of his speech Mr. Maksymchuk called on all Forum participants to consolidate their efforts and create an effective mechanism for supporting talented children and young people.

People’s Deputy Lesia Orobets said that supporting talented youth was in the highlight of attention. While earlier politicians didn’t display much interest to this issue, since children, even the talented ones, aren’t the electors, today many of them start pondering over their future. “I am certain that there’s no such thing as not talented children: it’s just that some teachers aren’t too talented,” Ms. Orobets said, adding that in many cases children require individual help and support to reveal their talent. She also expressed a high opinion of the Ministry for Education and Science’s actions, in part, introducing external tests and the educational reform.

Minister Pavlenko described the steps taken by the Ministry of Ukraine for Family, Youth, and Sports to support gifted young people. He recalled that year 2009 was proclaimed by a presidential order the Year of Youth in Ukraine, and thus not only his ministry but other ministries, organizations, central and local government bodies, and public organizations have to concentrate on addressing the issues related to young people. The minister recalled that Ukraine has a potential for financial and organizational support a young person able to offer something new and competitive. “I believe that a successful, able, mature person means a successful, able, mature state,” Minister Pavlenko said. “Our task and major priority is creating opportunities for young people to develop and be successful in their home country.”

Deputy Minister Poliansky expanded Minister Pavlenko’s ideas, saying, “It is extremely important that talented young people knew that their country needs them. On the other hand, young people also have to invest some effort.” Poliansky described his ministry’s activities in developing a more differentiated approach to education and upbringing, so that children had a chance to evolve their gifts and talents, in part, through introducing specialization is senior school and developing extracurricular education system.

Among other speakers were deputy head of the Kyiv Oblast State Administration Valery Kondruk, head of the Chief Administration for Education and Science at the Kyiv City State Administration Liliya Hrynevych, Head of the MSI Office in Ukraine Irene Chen, Academician with the National Academy of Sciences Mykola Veselovsky, advisor to the Minister of Education and Science, deputy head on the Education for the Disabled Committee Andriy Shevtsov, Vice President of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences Vasyl Madzyhon, and Head of the Gifted Youth Alliance Serhiy Terepitshchy.

The final part of the Forum featured the awards ceremony of the Third Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect All-Ukrainian Youth Competition.

The first awards were presented by the competition’s partners.

Last year the Intel office in Ukraine established a special prize for the authors of the works related to developing and using innovative informational technologies. This year the company gave its award to Olena Bodnaruk, student of the Odesa State Economy University, who submitted a project to encourage Ukrainian scientists, living abroad, to come back to Ukraine through the existing internet community. The prize, Intel Core 2 Duo laptop, was presented by Intel Educational Programs Director Tetiana Nanayeva. Also, this year the company established an encouragement prize, giving it to Ivano-Frankivsk-based Vasily Chupak.

The Lviv Institute of Management established a prize for the author of the best work on the subject, How Can We Create a New Business Elite in Ukraine? The winner, receiving a certificate and money prize from Rector Petro Yanitsky, was Roman Donets.

Deputy Director of the Agrarian Markets Development Institute Roman Korinets gave a certificate and money award to the best work on the subject, How Can We Preserve Ukraine’s Intellectual Potential?, to Serhiy Reshnovetsky from Kyiv oblast.

The Liberal Economic Club presented a prize for the best adaptation of the economical liberalism concept to solve problems of the modern Ukrainian economy. The money prize of UAH 2,000, presented by the Club’s president Vasyl Mahas, was given to Iryna Bazulko, student of Mykolayiv School No.3.

After that, the awards ceremony of the Third Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect competition started. The winners of the scientific research contest on humanitarian and economy subjects received certificates and prizes, with first place winners also receiving MSI Wind laptops.

The prizes to the scientific research contest in age category 1 were presented by Director General of the Artek ICC Borys Novozhylov. The winners in age categories 2 and 3 and the social projects competition received their prizes from Head of the Board of Directors of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Oleksandr Maksymchuk.

Head of the MSI Office in Ukraine Irene Chen gave awards and certificates to the business ideas contest winners. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners received MSI Wind laptops.

The Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation also presented letters of appreciation to the Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect competition partners: the Ministry of Ukraine for Family, Youth, and Sports, State Department of Intellectual Property, and Hrani-T publishing house.

After that, the awards ceremony of the Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect Silver Badge of Honor took place. Its first laureates were 23 young winners of the Gifted Youth Alliance competition, Little Academy of Sciences research competition, IntelEkoUkraine, Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect, school and college Olympics of the Ministry of Education and Science. The awards were presented by Head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Kateryna Yushchenko.

Complete list of the Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect competition winners and Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect Silver Badge of Honor laureates

Mrs. Yushchenko greeted all winners and thanked the Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect competition partners, addressing her special thanks to the businesses that supported the competition for realizing the importance of social responsibility.

Addressing the Forum participants, Mrs. Yushchenko said, “I would be very happy if all of you reached success. But it’s very important that you understood that being a good student and being smart isn’t enough for this. You have to know how to implement your ideas. We launched this contest not only to find out who has stronger knowledge of some subject but also to find out who is able to do something with it: make difference in the system, business, economy, or politics.”

Mrs. Yushchenko called on the young people to develop their talents in Ukraine, and when traveling abroad, to represent our country’s interests decently.

The Third Ukraine’s Innovative Intellect All-Ukrainian Youth Competition was held October 24, 2008 – January 20, 2009. It was held in three nominations: scholarly research on humanitarian and economical themes (suggested by organizers), business ideas, and social projects. The competition’s partners presented a series of special propositions.

The total of 1732 works was submitted. The absolute leader in the number of works was Poltava oblast, submitting 320 papers. Also in the top five are Volyn (141), Chernihiv (126), Kyiv (122), and Rivne (106) oblasts.

The regional selections were held February 23 – March 16. The National Contest Committee also selected winners in the social projects and business ideas competitions.