Who we are

“Smart Osvita” NGO was established in 2016 by members of Parental Control, a group of activists working moms who have been campaigning for education quality since 2012 to support and promote the New Ukrainian School reform of secondary education. The founding team is Ivanna Kobernyk, Zoya Zvyniatkivska, Oksana Makarenko, and Halyna Tytysh. A Memo of cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science was signed. 

Our mission is the formation of new social norms and values ​​in children through implementing school reforms, modernization of education, and providing teachers with modern teaching methods and tools.

Our values are partnership, innovation, proactivity, diversity, and openness to change. 

A dopamine molecule is our logo. The molecule without which a feeling of joy, happiness, and drive is impossible. And also, it is dopamine that motivates learning and helps choose and achieve goals. We work every day so that children and educators have the power to be open to new experiences that can change the world. After all, knowledge and education are the keys to the happiness of millions of people.

Around the values and goals, we form a community of people who want to change the educational sphere. On the one hand, this is the team of our “Smart Osvita” NGO; on the other — educators and, of course, parents should be active participants in the educational process. And only through the experience of co-creation will we achieve the desired result.

So, we have our media about the reform: “New Ukrainian School” and many projects with partners for children, parents, and educators.

Over the past 7 years, we have implemented dozens of large educational projects.

We trained teachers to work with children with special educational needs, conducted resilience and psychological competence training, and developed methodical materials for distance learning, which the Ministry of Education of Ukraine approved. We developed a Memorandum of cooperation of participants in the educational process, in the years of integrity, a course called “Communications for educational managers,” an online course of pre-medical care, preschool pediatrics with Svitlana Roiz, a resource box for teachers, a brochure for schools on the organization of distance learning, Lessons from COVID-19, integrity lessons for younger schoolchildren, which teach children to resist “domestic corruption” from childhood. Furthermore, we also implemented a course on effective communication for educational managers, supported the implementation of inclusive education, created a crisis support course for teachers in the performance of distance learning, and created a project that taught young people the art of debate and more.

Besides, we also launched one of the largest educational media in the country – the NUS website.

Since the beginning of the full-scale war, we have been helping Ukrainian schoolchildren, parents, and teachers to remain active participants in the educational process. We implement training and psychological assistance projects with our partners for Ukrainian children and educators. Including:

1. Communication and Advocacy of Secondary Education Reform

Mid-2017 the New Ukrainian School website was launched (more than 700k unique site visitors monthly). We also built a significant presence on social media. Our Facebook public group has 130k followers of the New Ukrainian School. Its average monthly reach is about 250k users. We have almost 35K participants in our Viber group for teachers.

2. Schoolchildren Training and Support

• “Stay with Ukraine” – free online classes for students temporarily staying abroad with Ukrainian teachers to master the Ukrainian studies component of the program on the Ukrainian language, literature, and history of Ukraine.
• “Now I Know” is a free 5-week online Ukrainian language and math course for schoolchildren. The project is aimed primarily at children who have not been able to fully master the school curriculum and have difficulties with the subject.
• “School Without Walls” is an offline education program involving 154 children who were affected by the war and could not continue their education in their home schools, so they completed the 2021-2022 school year in small groups under a special program with an in-depth study of English.
• “Ukraine Speaks English” is a regular online class for Ukrainian children with English-speaking teachers worldwide. During the lessons, children communicate in English on a variety of topics.
• “Learn with Your Ears” – audio lessons in Ukrainian language, literature, civic education, history of Ukraine, and world history for students in grades 7-11 – more than 280 lessons in audio form. They last 20 minutes and are designed for audial learners, children who are abroad and want to catch up with the Ukrainian curriculum, and those who are visually impaired but have good hearing.
• The online course “Cybersecurity Basics for Schoolchildren” teaches how to distinguish truth from fake news, talks about safe Internet communication, and how to protect your data from fraudsters.
• “FranKolo” offers free clubs and classes for children aged 4-16 in Ivano-Frankivsk.
• “VinOk” – free creative and sports clubs in Vinnytsia.
• Art Club in Lviv – free clubs and offline classes for displaced children at 4 locations.
• The Art Club in Krakow is a space where free creative classes are held for Ukrainian children aged 6 to 14 who were forced to leave Ukraine due to the war.
• Speaking club with Olena Ryzhkova – a free English conversation club for children aged 12-17.

3. Psychological resilience

• The Resilience and Recovery Workshops with Svitlana Roiz are 15-minute online meetings with psychological practices that will help you better cope with negativity and support your children. You can also do these exercises with your children, which will support them and help them stay in closer contact with you and themselves.
• The program “Children and War. Healing Techniques” program was aimed at developing teachers’ knowledge of psychological trauma, post-traumatic symptoms, and skills and abilities to provide first aid to children.
• Natalia Podolyak’s author’s two-day training on psychological assistance for teachers, which helps educators develop knowledge about psychological trauma in adults and children, provides techniques to reduce emotional stress.
• EMDR training is a week-long program for teachers to improve their psychological self-help skills. It also includes group sessions to work through personal traumatic experiences using the EMDR protocol.
  Psychological assistance sessions for children in Ivano-Frankivsk – a small group of local and internally displaced children with whom psychologist Iryna Demkiv works.

4. Training and support for teachers

• In the “Dopamine for Education” podcast, we talk to leading experts about trends and changes in education and how to help children understand their goals, how to achieve them, and how to find motivation to learn. The podcast for parents, teachers, and anyone interested in education was created with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.
• “National Project: Writing Essay” is a large-scale project that aims to change approaches to teaching writing in Ukrainian schools. It takes place in three stages:

1. training of trainers at the national level;
2. international training with experts from the National Writing Project (USA);
3. development of curricula for training and professional development of Ukrainian teachers by trained trainers.

5. For parents

• The “School Guide” project was created jointly with the “Parents SOS” NGO. It contains a manual and leaflets with answers to frequently asked questions about school.
• “Alive Writers. How to Talk to Children about War and Peace” is a project designed to help children and adolescents cope with the experience of war, as it is important not only to talk to them about these events but also to read special literature. The first two thematic manuals for parents and educators were created in 2019 and 2021; the third was published in November 2023.

Our Partners

“Smart Osvita“ has an excellent track record of partnerships with international donors, including the following projects:

• Running free online edutainment lessons for kids of war-torn Ukraine, with over 46k kids that attended open lessons, 525 open lessons run, 340 volunteer teachers engaged, free graduation exam preparation classes with ~660 kids studying for free (2022, Child Fund Germany);
• Building the psychological resilience of female educators and school children relocated from the war-affected areas (2022, UNFPA);
• Institutional grant support (Pact/USAID, 2021-2022);
• Running a dedicated inclusion section on the New Ukrainian School website (2018-2022, Renaissance Foundation);
• Developing online-course on work with children with special educational needs for primary school teachers (2018-2019, Pact Inc.);
• Prompt psychological assistance and programs of professional development for educators (2022, International Renaissance Foundation);
• Development of an online course and manual on effective communications for educational managers" (2019-2020, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom);
• The Ukrainian studies component for children who are temporarily abroad due to Russian aggression:  Ukrainian language, literature, and history of Ukraine in the project “Stay with Ukraine” (2022, with partners Educo, Theirworld, Global Business Coalition for Education); 
• Develop training programs for the development of writing skills and, in particular, essays for pedagogical universities participating in the project, training programs for improving the qualifications of practicing teachers based on IPPE: “National Project: We Writing Essay” (2021, Grammarly); 
• Development of online integrity lessons for grades 3 to 4 (2020-2021, Child Fund Germany).