Hundreds of Ukrainians have started businesses with the support of MHP-Competition Support Community
Kyiv • UNN
Hundreds of Ukrainians have started their own businesses, including bread baking and eco-farming, thanks to the Make Your Own business idea competition organized by MHP-Community, despite the ongoing military challenges. The winners received funding to implement their innovative projects focused on community needs. A total of 80 business ideas were supported.
Despite the war, Ukrainians are baking bread, starting eco-farms, beekeeping, and berry business. All of this is part of the "Do Your Own" business idea competition that stimulates the development of entrepreneurial activity and small businesses in Ukraine, UNN reports.
Details
For example, one of the contest winners, Olga Kryvanchyk, grows blueberries. Because of the war, the woman found herself "with nothing" in the Dnipro region. However, she did not give up: she developed a business plan, applied for and won funding for her project "Growing Blueberries in Containers."
"This victory gave me the strength to dream further: about selling seedlings, processing berries into jam, buying a greenhouse, growing strawberries..." she comments.
In turn, Vasyl Pavuk from the village of Shybalyn, Ternopil Oblast, purchased a shock freezer and two refrigerators for UAH 97,900.
"Now I can maintain the price of blueberries because the harvest will not be lost. And so I can plan to expand the area under the berry, and contribute to the development of the community with my small business," says the entrepreneur.
MHP-Community is convinced that the economy powered by entrepreneurs is one of the pillars on which the Ukrainian state's capacity rests.
Recall.
At the end of May, the organizers of the "Do Your Own" business idea competition for entrepreneurs in small towns and villages announced the winners of the 2023 edition. This year, the MHP-Community Foundation, which organized the competition, supported 80 business projects totaling more than UAH 7.4 million.
A total of 615 applications were received from small entrepreneurs from all over the country. In particular, most business ideas were submitted in Kyiv (22%), Cherkasy (12%), Dnipro (11%), Vinnytsia (9%), and Lviv (9%) regions.
The main criteria for selecting the winners were project innovation, economic component, creation of new jobs, social significance, and involvement of IDPs in business or work. Both existing businesses that are expanding or relocating and entrepreneurs who have a business idea and are just looking for funding to implement it received grant support.
Help
"MHP-Hromadas is a Ukrainian charitable foundation that started its operations in 2015. Its main mission is the comprehensive development of communities. The geography of its activities includes 12 regions of Ukraine: more than 700 towns and villages. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Foundation has been systematically supporting people in the war zone, Ukrainian defenders and rescuers, communities, hospitals and maternity homes, charitable institutions that care for orphans and the elderly, as well as people who have lost their homes and livelihoods due to the war.
