Nearly 2 000 Ukrainian officers retrained for the private sector
On 18 July 2011, the national “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute” in Ukraine hosted its seventh graduation ceremony and employment fair for former military officers. Organized with the Kharkiv Region Employment Centre, fifteen private companies from the area participated.
At the ceremony, 63 officers were awarded certificates after three months of professional training in the areas of business management, marketing, and computer systems and networks. Another 14 will receive them after finishing an English course financed from the NATO civil budget.
Since January 2006, the Resettlement and Retraining Centre of the Khmelnytskyi National University (Khmelnytskyi Centre) has been the most active participant in the NATO-Ukraine programme on retraining retired military personnel in Ukraine. The programme, made possible through a NATO Partnership for Peace Trust Fund, aims to help retired officers and military personnel transition into civil society as they are released by Ukraine’s Armed Forces. In 2009, a partner centre was opened in Kharkiv at the Interdisciplinary Institute of Postgraduate Studies of the “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”.
From 2006 to 2011, the training centre in Khmelnytskyi has trained 1446 officers, 1047 of them from the Khmelnytskyi region. Another 399 officers have received training in the Kharkiv region from April 2009 to July 2011.
Those attending the ceremony included Danish Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Borg-Hansen, Danish Defence Attaché Ove Bach Hansen, Head of the NATO Liaison Office in Ukraine Marcin Koziel, NATO-Ukraine Resettlement Programme Manager Christopher Staudt, Director of the Khmelnytskyi Resettlement Centre Mykhailo Voynarenko, Head of the Defence Department of the Kharkiv Region Administration Valeriy Andreyev, and Head of the Defence Department of the Kharkiv City Administration Yuriy Yozhykov.
The eighth training stage will begin on 15 September 2011. So far 20 applications have been received.