KYIV. Nov 8 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine’s First Lady, Board Chair of Petro Poroshenko Charity Foundation, Maryna Poroshenko, and Chairman of the Silk Road Chamber of International Commerce Lu Jianzhong have signed a grant agreement worth $200,000 (approximately UAH 5.2 million) for the development of inclusive secondary education in Ukraine, the Ukrainian presidential administration’s press service reported.
According to Poroshenko, there are around 7 million children, of whom about 700,000 have mental and physical development disorders. “At the same time we have a very disappointing statistics: only 10% of them are trained in inclusive schools, and the rest are left outside socialization and fulfilling family life,” she said.
“The grant money from China will be assigned for the development of the scientific and teaching experiment, which Maryna Poroshenko together with the Education and Science Ministry of Ukraine are implementing in Zaporizhia region in 2016-2019. At the moment, out of 600 schools in the region, only 51 are inclusive… The key prospect of the project lies in the fact that after three years this groundwork will become the basis of a roadmap for the introduction of inclusive education in all the regions of Ukraine,” reads a statement on the presidential administration’s website.
