You're reading: Western-educated professionals offer help to Ukraine’s government through new website

While Ukraine’s new acting government made their first steps in stabilizing the situation in the country, a group of Western-educated Ukrainians are offering their skills.

The Harvard
Club of Ukraine, a community of Harvard alumni, addressed interim
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk with an open letter to let him know of their readiness to work in Ukraine’s government.

Later, more
than 20 different alumni communities, including graduates of the London School
of Economics, INSEAD business school, Columbia University, University of Oxford
and others joined the initiative.

The group
came up with a website that aims to match Western-educated
specialists with Ukraine’s new government.  

A website, which was launched a few days
ago, turns out to be a platform to search for savvy individuals ready to work
full- or part-time for local governmental offices. The government officials can
send a request for a professional with listed criteria, while the coordinators
of the group will proceed the CVs of the possible candidates they have in the
database and send the best matches back no later than in 24 hours.

So far the
group received one request for help from Vitali Klitschko
UDAR party, which was in search of a deputy
assistant. The group reciprocates with 13 resumes, which are now “proceeding by
the party.”

“Now we
want to enable governmental officials to access the database of more than 1,500
professionals. We offer our best specialists in different spheres,” Nataliya
Bugayova, the member of Harvard Club of Ukraine, explains.

Bugayova
said Ukraine should follow Turkey, Georgian and Singapore’s approach, as these
countries invest in a decent education for their lawmakers.

Bugayova, who
got her master’s in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, is certain “there’s a real chance to engage best educated people to the government
and renew the public sector.” The alumni believe the government can benefit
with such cooperations stressing that 
the
idea is important for them because “it’s kind of follow-up of EuroMaidan
events.”

“Ukraine’s
freedom came at a high cost,” Ruslan Furtas, Muskie alumni association coordinator explained. “And
we want to make it possible for Ukraine’s new government to find best specialists
as they are critically needed.” 

Oksana
Shulyar, another member of initiative group, said there’re some key ministries alumni want to keep eye on. “We’d be glad to work closely with economic,
defense and legal spheres. Also Education Ministry critically needs
professionals,” Shulyar adds.

Oksana Shulyar, the initiative group member says it’s critically important to engage professionals to Ukraine’s Education Ministry. Photo by Kostyantyn Chernichkin

The number
of Ukraine’s Ministries already reached out the coordinators of the group for
further cooperation.

Most of the
alumni say they are ready to work for free. “I’m joined the initiative as it’s
important for me to influence the situation, especially to speed up the legal
reform in Ukraine,” Artem Shaipov, Cambridge University alumnus explains.
Shaipov also said he’s ready to invest his time in the new project.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be
reached at
[email protected]