MYRP Program Transforms Ukrainian Schools Into a “Place of Power” For Students, Teachers
The implementation of the MYRP in Ukraine has become not only an important element of support for the educational system but also a platform for integrating leading global practices.
Kyiv Post
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The full-scale war has radically changed Ukrainian education, forcing millions of children to seek refuge in new cities and new countries, and to adapt to new realities. Over the past four years, Ukraine’s educational sphere has undergone significant transformations, and learning losses are currently very difficult even to estimate — they have become one of the most serious challenges for the country’s future.
For Ukraine, overcoming educational losses is one of today’s priorities. This became the main goal ofMYRP (Multi-Year Resilience Programme). MYRP is funded by the global fund Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and is implemented with the active assistance of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the participation of international and national NGOs.
Kyiv Post continues to report on the Programme, which over several years has become not just a tool for overcoming the consequences of war for education, but a full-fledged platform for the implementation of blended learning, digital tools, tutoring, and inclusive practices. Such a story was made possible thanks to the combined efforts of the state, international partners, and the civil society sector.
We have alreadywritten about the implementation of the so-called “hard component” of the Programme — primarily about safe conditions for learning: shelters in schools, kindergartens, and vocational education institutions. Now our focus is on the peculiar “soft component” of MYRP, which, like the hard component, is being worked on by partner NGOs united into national and international consortias. The local consortium, led by the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), brought together the charitable foundation “savED,” the Osvitoria Public Union, the NGO “Teach for Ukraine,” the Projector Foundation, and EdCamp Ukraine. The international consortium, led by the Finn Church Aid (FCA), works in partnership with the NGOs DOCCU, “MriyDiy,” and GoGlobal.
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MYRP accelerates the implementation of tutoring, mentorship, blended learning, and digital solutions
Due to the war and long breaks in learning, many children need additional educational support. Tutoring and mentorship provide academic support for schoolchildren. Tutoring involves individual or group sessions that help students catch up on missed topics and better master difficult subjects. Mentorship is long-term support from a mentor who shares experience and helps the child develop not only in studies but also personally. These activities in frontline regions are implemented by the MYRP program partner — NGO “Teach for Ukraine.” Its programs “Educational Soup” (for students in grades 5–11) and “Impulse” help schoolchildren improve their learning results and regain motivation.
The “Impulse” program is a completely new line of work for the organization within MYRP. The main goal of this program is the sustainable support of teenagers’ mental health through peer-to-peer activities. In this way, learning and emotional support occur directly between peers. As a result, teenagers are not just given basic skills in emotional support, self-regulation, and mutual aid, but are also encouraged to initiate similar sessions for their peers in schools and communities.
In addition, the organization works on developing teachers’ competencies — a special training program for young teachers was developed and implemented for this purpose.
Results of the special training program for young teachers. Kyiv Post Infographic.
Ksenia Kalyna, project manager at NGO “Teach for Ukraine”, notes that they managed to adapt the international standard of competency-based tutoring. Thus, they based the “StudMentor” program on the experience of successful mentoring programs such as The National Success Mentors Initiative (USA) and Rock Your Life! (Germany).
“Global experience has shown us an uncomfortable truth: in crisis conditions, a child often ‘drops out’ of learning not because of the difficulty of the subject, but because of a lost sense of safety and meaning. Therefore, for us, a mentor is not a ‘tutor for an hour,’ but a stable adult nearby,” she notes in a conversation with Kyiv Post.
An example of how such an approach “works” in practice was the story of a student mentor who, during an online session, noticed a child playing an online game simultaneously. The mentor did not punish the student but decided to support him.
“Formally, this could be perceived as disinterest or a breach of discipline. But the mentor reached a different conclusion: the student is trying to keep his attention where it is understandable and safe. For the next session, the mentor prepared a lesson in the style of that game. As a result, for the first time in a long while, the child was fully engaged in the process and was able to work with focus for the entire lesson,” says Ksenia Kalyna.
Within the MYRP program, blended learning is also being integrated into Ukrainian realities — an educational model that combines traditional face-to-face learning in classrooms with remote digital technologies. Blended learning has long been a global trend. Oleksandra Chubrey from the Projector Foundation, which focuses on improving the quality and resilience of vocational education in communities, primarily in frontline regions, says that during the development of educational programs, they analyzed the experience of Sweden, Austria, Finland, and Estonia.
“We integrated modular program design and practice-oriented content based on the ‘ready-to-use’ principle. This is an approach common in international programs for countries in crisis, where a teacher can immediately apply the proposed content in their activities. For us, blended learning is a tool of resilience, not just digitalization. The main thing for us is not the mechanical borrowing of solutions, but their adaptation to the reality of Ukrainian vocational education institutions in war conditions. So that blended learning becomes a tool for continuity, accessibility, and quality of education,” she emphasizes.
The results of the foundation’s work are the online courses “Soft skills,” “Entrepreneurship,” and “Crisis Management,” placed on the national platform “Vocational Education Online.” Projector Foundation actively combines synchronous and asynchronous formats: video lectures, webinars, interactive tasks, and consulting support to ensure equal access for students and for those who study and work in war conditions. An integral part of the blended approach is the training of teachers and management teams.
Digitalization of education within MYRP has become another direction for fundamentally changing teaching approaches in Ukraine. Actually, due to digitalization, blended learning as a mass phenomenon has become possible even in Ukrainian realities. The creation of virtual classrooms and the use of relevant online platforms such as Google Classroom, Moodle, or Canvas have long ceased to surprise the absolute majority of students and teachers. In this context, it is worth mentioning the further development of Digital Learning Centers (DLC) by the savED charitable foundation.
Development of such centers is based on the experience of digitalization in the regions with limited access to schools. Anna Putsova, co-founder of the foundation, emphasizes the importance of offline locations, as in Ukrainian conditions, the physical presence of children in such spaces has become critical. “We create educational spaces so-called ‘Hives’ (Vulyky). These are centers for children in communities heavily affected by the war. They provide access not only to academic education but also to meaningful, smart leisure. For us, physical space is a basic sense of coziness and safety, which we fill with educational activities and opportunities for development,” she notes.
Inside one of the "Hives". Photo: savED foundation
According to research by the savED foundation, more than 50,000 children have already passed through 150 “Hives” opened (25 of them within MYRP) in 10 regions (Kyiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, and Vinnytsia). Every month, such centers can accommodate over 15,000 children. Currently, the majority of “Hives” (93%) are located in schools; some of them operate in libraries, youth and cultural centers.
Another striking example of an original digital solution is the EdWay platform, created by “EdCamp Ukraine” and transferred to the state free of charge, which has become a tool for forming individual professional development for teachers.
Inclusion, non-discrimination, mental health, and psychosocial support – MYRP priorities
At the core of inclusive practices (educational approaches that ensure equal access to learning for all children, regardless of their physical or psychological characteristics) actively implemented within MYRP by program partners, also lies international experience.
Thus, the SEL (Social and emotional learning) became the foundation for forming a safe and inclusive environment in Ukrainian educational institutions. It is aimed at developing students’ socio-emotional (soft) skills, such as: attention, empathy, mindfulness, social skills, physical and emotional literacy, systems thinking, and others. As of 2025, SEL is implemented in 144 countries (in 24 of them, including Ukraine, on a systemic level) involving 250,000 educators and 6 million students.
Daria Dolimbaieva, head of the communications unit at NGO “EdCamp Ukraine”, explains the value of this experience: “The SEL program gaves Ukrainian education not only a scientifically verified model but also a ‘language’ for discussing dignity and mutual respect.”
She also mentioned that at the time the full-scale war began, institutions that became part of the all-Ukrainian experiment, had been implementing the SEL program for over two years. And although the SEL program was not created for war realities, the socio-emotional skills formed during this time by students and teachers proved to be anindispensable support for them.
Overall, the implementation of the SEL program in Ukrainian realities is also about the constant adaptation and Ukrainization of content, and permanent work on improving teaching methodology. Various partners continuously conduct work in this context within their respective areas.
Results of the SEL experiment in Ukraine according to the "EdCamp Ukraine" Report. Kyiv Post Infographic.
“In war conditions, the most effective components of the program were those aimed at stabilizing the children’s state and developing psychological resilience. The most helpful parts for students were: ‘Resilience Zone,’ ‘Nurturing Resilience,’ ‘Attention and Self-Awareness,’ ‘Self-Compassion,’ ‘Compassion for Others,’ ‘Self-Regulation,’ and ‘Exploring Emotions,’” the EdCamp Ukraine representative told us.
Daria Dolimbaieva also named another important direction for implementing inclusive practices that her organization is focused on: gender equality and non-discrimination (“EdCamp Ukraine” is the Gender Lead Organization (GLO) in the consortium). Currently, they are training 38 special advisors within the consortium, ensuring compliance with international standards at the operational level.
Daria Dolimbaieva added that among other things, “EdCamp Ukraine” developed and is testing a comprehensive program within the consortium aimed at providing training for advisors on a non-discriminatory approach in education.
“Thanks to the constant cooperation of the expert circle and partner teams, each NGO in the MYRP consortium underwent a kind of audit of policies and activities for compliance with a non-discriminatory approach in education. Now they are developing their own gender policies, adapting their activities to include gender-sensitive and inclusive approaches,” added Daria Dolimbaieva.
It is worth noting that other tools also contribute to the acceleration of inclusive approach adaptation in schools, such as counseling for students by teachers of mathematics, Ukrainian, and English organized through the POVIR platform developed by “EdCamp Ukraine.”
Overcoming educational losses
Another striking example of applying best international practices in Ukraine is catch-up activities. These are sessions aimed at quickly filling educational gaps in schoolchildren that arose due to interruptions in learning (war, pandemic). They are conducted in small groups or individually, have an interactive format (games, art therapy, speaking clubs), and focus on key subjects such as Ukrainian language, mathematics, and English.
As the results of the MYRP program show, the implementation of Catch-up education models in Ukraine is quite successful.
At one of the Catch program trainings. Photo: NGO GoGlobal.
Uliana Sobolevska, a representative of the “MriyDiy” organization, says that her organization focuses on overcoming educational losses in primary school. Specifically, it concerns 3rd-grade students who, due to the war, did not master basic knowledge from grades 1–2 in Ukrainian language and mathematics. The foundation also implements a mentoring model for teacher support — meaning not one-time trainings, but long-term support and reflection.
Two waves of “MriyDiy” activity within MYRP covered a significant number of students and educators (see infographic).
Results of the NGO "MriyDiy" program's work on catching up with educational losses within MYRP, starting from 2024. Kyiv Post Infographic.
It should be added that other MYRP partners joined the implementation of Catch-up education models in Ukrainian realities. Thus, within the Catch program for primary schools, NGO GoGlobal, for example, developed a comprehensive program for catching up on educational losses for students in grades 2–4, aimed at restoring basic skills in Ukrainian, English, and mathematics.
The mentoring programs of NGO “Teach for Ukraine,” which we mentioned above, are also built on the principles of Catch-up education. As Ksenia Kalyna told us, according to this approach, sessions accompanied by mentors and tutors are built in the format of learning cycles — so-called “waves” lasting from 3 to 12 weeks.
Career orientation is in the focus of MYRP
Along with overcoming educational losses, another important area of MYRP partners’ activity is career orientation. This primarily concerns increasing teachers’ professional competence and helping schoolchildren with career choices.
For instance, GoGlobal conducted 4 waves of offline and 8 waves of online trainings, which covered 560 primary school English teachers.
In addition, over the past year, GoGlobal actively implemented the “Career GPS” program (for teenagers and educators), which became one of the organization’s main areas of work. In August 2025, the NGO conducted offline camps for 243 teenagers of 8th-9th grade.
A significant addition to the organization’s project portfolio was the PROSkills educational product for vocational education institutions. “PROSkills is the first set of English language teaching materials for vocational and technical education in Ukraine,” the organization informed us. (More details in the infographic below).
Coverage of teachers and students by GoGlobal programs within MYRP. Kyiv Post Infographic.
MYRP opened a window of opportunity for the Ukrainian school
The synergy of the state, international partners, and the civil society sector within the MYRP program has once again proved that any crisis situation opens a window of opportunity.
Created to overcome educational losses, the Programme has accelerated the integration of leading global practices into various aspects of the educational process in Ukraine.
The results of the joint efforts of MYRP partners prove: the rapid adaptation of global experience has already begun to transform the Ukrainian school into a source of psychological resilience, a true “place of power” where every student and teacher can find help.
