40 community representatives learned how to write grants and will be able to attract up to UAH 1 million for their ideas

40 representatives of local governments who have completed a project management training course from MHP and the MHP for Communities Charitable Foundation now know how to create high-quality grant applications and raise additional funds for their communities. In addition to the skills gained, community representatives will be able to implement their own ideas through a new grant competition, UNN reports.

Training program for community representatives The Leadership School "My Community and MHP: Growing Together", which MHP and the MHP for Communities Charitable Foundation implement together with Mariupol State University, brought together community leaders, council secretaries, starostas and deputies. Participants learned to work effectively in a team, created grant projects, and improved their professional skills.

MHP's Culinary Center became a space for networking, where offline and online trainings were held in June. Experts explained how the ability to present oneself affects the investment opportunities of the community, how to effectively conduct a collective discussion, build a dialogue and work in a team, and learned how to create projects that will be interesting to investors.

The School of Leaders was joined by educators from Mariupol State University with experience in management, business, strategy, public administration, and psychology. In particular, educators Tetiana Marena, Larysa Shaulska, and Anastasiia Trofymenko took part in the development of the training program. Teachers Andrii Stoyka, Anna Chechel, and Olha Puchyna told the participants about fundraising, social entrepreneurship, and stress management. And business coach Olga Mashtaler helped community leaders improve their self-presentation, communication and public speaking skills.

"Serving the community is one of the important missions of Mariupol University in the context of displacement. By joining forces, our educational institution  and Foundation "MHP-Community", implemented the School of Leaders to help community leaders in their professional development. After such a fruitful collaboration, you really understand how much communities need support and how much they expect it. Our cooperation with MHP in this area will continue. We are currently developing a program for the next stage of the School of Leaders, which will provide mentoring support for the preparation of community development projects by participants," said Tetiana Marena, Vice-Rector for Scientific and Pedagogical Work at Moscow State University.

An important part of the training was the practical part of the program, where local government representatives created projects that they want to implement in their communities.

"High-quality cooperation between business and government is an effective way to develop a community. A sustainable and transparent  business is interested in the community's development, the growth of the population's welfare, and the authorities' professionalism and initiative. Therefore, it is important to constantly improve the competencies of people who are making and will make powerful changes in their communities, to improve the efficiency of those areas for which they are currently responsible. For this reason, MHP, together with the MHP for Communities Foundation and Mariupol State University, organized training for community representatives to help develop skills that will help attract additional resources from various sources, and thus stimulate the socio-economic development of communities," said Pavlo Moroz, Director of MHP's Corporate Social Responsibility Department.

At the end of the first stage of the training program, the Foundation announced a grant competition for the School of Leaders participants. Thus, communities will be able to receive funding and implement the necessary projects. Within the framework of the competition, participants will be able to attract from UAH 500,000 to UAH 1,000,000 for their projects. The projects should focus on veterans' reintegration, energy efficiency, or youth capacity development.

Applications will be accepted from August 1 to September 15. Participants will receive expert support from the program's mentors while creating their applications. The winners will be announced on November 10.

The local government representatives also received certificates of successful completion of the training and visited  the chefs of the MHP Culinary Center Roman Makovetsky  and Yuriy Hrytsay.