29
Jul. 2008
A Navy officer receives his diploma in Sebastopol
NATO supports two major initiatives to help Ukraine resettle military personnel made redundant by the restructuring of the country’s armed forces. Released officers are given the opportunity to acquire additional professional skills in order to facilitate their reinsertion into the civilian sector of the economy.
The Alliance’s assistance in this field is implemented through a NATO-funded retraining programme that focuses on linguistic, management and technical courses; and a Partnership for Peace Trust Fund led by the Netherlands, which finances the activities of the University of Khmelnytskyi Resettlement and Retraining Centre.
From 2000 to 2007, NATO has financed retraining courses for more than a thousand former officers. In 2008, 460 additional officers will receive the benefit of language training in English, French, German or Italian. They will also have the opportunity to follow management and technical courses. For instance a naval engineering course will allow Navy officers to obtain recognition of their diplomas in civilian shipping.
The programme takes into consideration the labour market demand and emphasizes regional diversification. In 2008 courses have been organized in twelve different cities of Ukraine, among them Sebastopol, where a graduation ceremony took place on 25 July 2008. Forty released officers received their diploma after completing a cycle of 400 hours of English courses.
The Partnership for Peace Trust Fund was launched at the beginning of 2006 - with the Netherlands as lead nation - to finance the programmes developed by the Retraining and Resettlement Centre of the University of Khmelnytskyi, in Western Ukraine.
The centre provides management and computer systems courses in three cycles of 500 hours per year. From January 2006 to May 2008, a total of 414 former military personnel were retrained. In addition, a further 70 officers received their diploma at a graduation ceremony held on 29 July 2008.
The courses are geared to meet civilian employment needs, based on an analysis of the labour market in close cooperation with Ukrainian State employment agencies. The centre provides support for job placement through maintenance of a database of vacancies, job fairs and individual support.
