Shaping a new generation of change makers. Summarizing the results of the CEDEM educational project for young people

The Open University of Reforms (OUR) is CEDEM’s educational project for young people about reforms in Ukraine, the prospects and problems of their implementation, as well as the skills necessary for the future reformers.

The project was launched in 2015 and continued until 2023. 

Since then, OUR has been enrolling students twice a year. The training format involved Saturday lectures with the well-known reformers of Ukraine and dedicated activists, personal development workshops and the opportunity to implement your own project with the OUR team.

Let’s talk briefly about the successes of the project during this period:

  • Over the eight years of the project, we have had 16 enrollments.
  • After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the project became even bigger, because the online format of the meetings allowed us to engage active young people from all over Ukraine. Therefore, as of 2020 the OUR has an all-Ukrainian format.
  • The 15th and 16th enrollments were held online due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • In 2022, 70 participants successfully graduated from the OUR, 52 of them completed internships in NGOs and governmental organizations. They implemented 9 projects related to the development of Ukrainian civil society, critical thinking and culture.
  • In total, there are now more than 580 motivated and ambitious change-makers in the project’s alumni community.

You can read about the project on the Facebook page.