The International Renaissance Foundation initiated the new Anti-crisis Humanitarian Program for the purpose of assisting people, cultural and public centers that had been most impacted by the financial and economic crisis. The Program will provide support to social, cultural and humanitarian projects, targeted on retaining educational and health-improving programs for children and youth from rural areas and economically depressed regions; retaining rural cultural institutions and their transformation into centers of public activity and children’s out-of-school engagement. The Program will contribute to the process of initiating activity of hobby groups of children’s and schoolchildren’s creative work, groups of ‘young technical enthusiasts’ and centers for child development.
The Program is initiated in 2009. The initial budget of the Program for 2009 is 300,000 USD.
STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS OF ACTIVITY FOR 2009:
Working out of the Program’s strategy by encouraging initiative groups, public organizations and Ukraine’s bodies of state authority for their own independent determination of priorities, directions and projects, which would have to be supported within the scope of the Anti-crisis Humanitarian Program;
Announcement of competitions, support of competition projects and the most significant public initiatives in the form of ‘out-of-competition projects’;
Special support to projects, directed on the following: retaining education and health-improving programs for children of vulnerable groups of the population; organization of amateur groups for retraining of citizens, search for new methods of professional retraining and other forms of assistance to persons who were left without work in consequence of the crisis; support to rural centers of culture and education (culture centers, libraries), creation of public engagement centers on their basis; promotion of development of social entrepreneurship in areas where jobs are being cut at so-called enterprises that provide work to all the people living in one certain area; assistance to regional theaters and creative teams, musical ensembles, folk craftsmen, whose activity was negatively impacted by the financial and economic crisis.
PRINCIPLES OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROGRAM
The Program carries out its activity by running competitions, tenders, providing support to out-of-competition initiatives and by implementing its operational events on the basis of cooperation with public and cultural organizations.
TARGET AUDIENCE OF THE PROGRAM:
Public organizations, whose activity is related with issues of preservation of cultural heritage;
Non-state non-profit organizations that carry out work with children, youth, and teachers;
Secondary educational institutions of the education system, children’s homes, boarding schools and boarding schools for children with special needs;
Publishing houses and organizations, related with publishing activity;
Creative teams, theaters, clubs, libraries and other cultural organizations
