Astarta-Kyiv, MIM-Kyiv’s long-term partner invited its experts to sit on the jury of the business-plans competition. Viktor Ivanchuk, the founder and CEO of the company and founder of the Charitable Foundation “Believe in Yourself” and MIM-Kyiv MBA initiated the competition “Heading towards Independence” to award grants supporting Ukrainian businesses. MIM-Kyiv experts helped to select 60 winners out of 220 applications.

The winners who will receive twelve thousand Euros each are from Poltava, Khmelnytskyi, Ternopil, Vinnytsa, Zhytomyr, and Kharkiv regions.

- We reviewed various projects ranging from crafting cheese or bread to growing raspberries. All of them are small businesses. Due to the grants, they will better sustain their operations. We paid special attention to those who relocated from occupied territories or from war zones. Expansion opportunity was one of the top criteria for assessment, Oleksandr Bobrovsky, programs and projects manager at MIM-Kyiv and member of the assessment committee said. He mentioned that most of the applicants presented well-developed and substantiated projects with a clear vision of the goals and steps to reach them.

The competition is a joint effort of the Astarta-Kyiv and Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH. Charitable Foundation “Believe in Yourself”, CO “Light of Hope” and Zleda Charitable Foundation were partners in the project.