100 veteran business projects have become winners of the "Varto ROBYty SVOYE 2.0" competition, which the Ukrainian Veteran Fund of the Ministry of Veterans Affairs implemented in partnership with the Charitable Foundation "MHP-Hromadi" and the agricultural company Kernel, UNN reports.
Financial support for the implementation of business ideas will be received by 100 veteran businesses from 20 regions of Ukraine and the capital. The grant amounts range from 600 thousand to 1.6 million hryvnias, depending on the project budget. The largest number of winners are registered in Poltava and Vinnytsia regions — 21 and 15, respectively.
Thanks to participation in the competition, veterans and their families, as well as the families of fallen Defenders, will be able to start or scale their own businesses, create new jobs, and contribute to economic development in their communities.
Every veteran business is a path to self-recovery, to finding oneself in the civilian world. We at the Ukrainian Veteran Fund sincerely support everyone who embarks on this path, because we know that for veterans, entrepreneurship is not only about income, but also about a sense of their own strength and the ability to create change.
The competition partners are the MHP-Hromadi Charitable Foundation and Kernel, which systematically support defenders returning to civilian life.
The MHP-Hromadi Foundation has been supporting small entrepreneurs in communities through grant competitions for ten years. During this time, we have managed to create and scale more than 500 businesses, including veteran ones. Thanks to the "MHP Together" program, we are building infrastructure for veterans in communities and helping them master new professions and discover new opportunities.
The projects range from agricultural production to service provision. The competition winners represent various fields: agricultural production, wood and metal processing, food processing and production, as well as the provision of household and service services. Among the supported initiatives, in particular, are the arrangement of greenhouses, the purchase of equipment for farms, the launch of craft food production, the modernization of metalworking industries, the creation of a service for installing and maintaining intercoms, and much more.
In total, 259 applications were submitted for the competition, which indicates the importance of programs supporting veteran entrepreneurship and the desire of veterans to implement their own business ideas after service.
Since its inception, the Ukrainian Veteran Fund has already implemented 14 competitions to support business projects of veterans, their families, and the families of the fallen, as well as initiatives for veterans from public organizations. In total, 508 projects worth almost 629 million hryvnias have been supported within the "Varto" programs.
The list of winners of the "Varto ROBYty SVOYE 2.0" competition is available on the website of the Ukrainian Veteran Fund at the link: