Ukraine's recovery will rest on its people, and above all on the young Ukrainians now deciding where to study, work and live. The OECD's 2025 economic survey of Ukraine finds that the war has displaced around 30 per cent of the working-age population, and that a low birth rate, ageing and mobilisation are placing severe strain on the labour market. Against this backdrop, helping young people choose a future in Ukraine matters more than ever.
The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, together with the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine and the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, led by Minister Matvii Bidnyi, has presented a new pilot project for those aged 18 to 23: "Youth Chooses Ukraine".
Twenty young people will take part in the first stage. The programme combines six months of intensive work with a full year of individual support, accompanying each participant as they gain an education or a profession, find employment and take their first steps into independent adult life.
The assistance is deliberately broad. It brings together psychological and medical support, career guidance and access to education, help into work, social adaptation, mentoring and legal advice, as well as practical housing solutions for those on the pilot. The intention is to surround each young person with everything they need to make confident choices.
"Ukraine's recovery depends on the generation now deciding where to build their lives. Our businesses are among the country's largest private employers, and they are hiring, training and investing to give young people a reason to build their careers at home. We welcome this initiative by our shareholder's foundation: it offers young Ukrainians concrete supports — an education, a profession, a first job and help with housing. Every young person who chooses to stay and work here strengthens Ukraine's future", said Rinat Akhmetov's Foundation Supervisory Board Chair Natalia Yemchenko.
"For us, projects like this — supporting young people and children — matter enormously. Under the President of Ukraine's Bring Kids Back UA initiative, 2,212 Ukrainian children have already been returned from temporarily occupied territories and from russia. They come through the Centre for the Protection of Children's Rights, where we restore their rights. Now we are, in effect, creating a new mechanism that should grow into a full support programme for young people," said Dmytro Lubinets, Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and Ombudsman of Ukraine.
"Young people aged 18 to 23 are at the stage of forming who they are. They are choosing a profession and where to live. It is very important for us to be beside them at this moment, to support them," said Kseniia Sukhova, Director General of the Foundation.
The pilot follows the ten-year direction our shareholder, Rinat Akhmetov, agreed this year with the renewed supervisory board of his charitable foundation. That course places children and youth among six priorities to 2036, alongside veterans, sport, recovery, education and remembrance.
By investing in young Ukrainians today, the Foundation is helping to secure the country it will rely on tomorrow.
