Mariupol, April 8, 2019 – the second SkillsLab: Your Own Business training program was opened in the Mariupol Development Foundation, implemented by the Mariupol Youth Association jointly with CSR Ukraine, CSR Development Center, UNFPA Ukraine with the support of the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine.  

Skills Lab: Your Own Business is a special two-month program aimed at developing and improving the skills needed to start one's own business. The training takes place in the format of workshops delivered by local experts and entrepreneurs. During 2018, more than 150 young people from 6 cities of Ukraine: Lviv, Kremenchuk, Dnipro, Kherson, Mariupol, and Rivne, took part in the regional skills development laboratories.

This year the #SkillsLab free workshop program was launched in the Donetsk region, namely in Mariupol and Kramatorsk.

Tetyana Lomakina, CEO of the Mariupol Development Foundation, congratulated the program participants from the two cities, and highlighted the success of the first pilot #SkillsLab program implementation in 2018. Yuliya Novak, Program Advisor on Youth and HIV at UNFPA Ukraine, United Nations Population Fund, shared the outcomes of this program in other Ukrainian cities and recommendations on program training.

Guest speakers, entrepreneur Andriy Dyakonov and Tetyana Gorokhova, assistant professor of the Department of Marketing and Business Administration of the Pryazovskiy State Technical University, presented motivational speeches. They shared the secrets of their successes, told about mistakes in career development and business.

36 people in Mariupol and 32 participants in Kramatorsk enrolled to the SkillsLab: Your Own Business program. The project will then be opened in Avdiyivka and will last until May 31, 2019.

In the next two months, the participants will engage in fruitful and exciting training, write and defend their business projects.