Optima Distance Learning School announced on its Facebook page that it has joined the European Business Association (EBA), one of the largest and most influential business communities in Ukraine.
According to the school’s founder, Maria Miletska, this step is intended to accelerate the further development of the educational institution and improve educational programs based on innovative approaches and methods.
“EBA membership opens up new opportunities for Optima to cooperate with leading companies and experts, which will help improve the quality of educational services and allow the school to invest more effectively in educational projects using modern technologies and approaches to learning. Students and their parents will have access to even more innovative and high-quality curricula that meet international standards,” Miletska said.
She also emphasizes that membership in the European Business Association is a recognition of its reliability and professional level. This confirms that Optima continues to move towards providing high-quality education for its students, helping them prepare for a successful future.
Thus, joining the EBA is an important step in strengthening Optima’s position in the educational services market, providing additional opportunities for its students, their parents and teaching staff.
Earlier, at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine, Optima School Director Olga Bilodid announced that Optima School had received a permit to conduct educational activities in Poland and had started teaching high school students (grades 10-11) in this country.
Optima School was established and licensed in 2015. Currently, the school has 20 thousand students and is the largest online school in Ukraine.
Optima Distance College is planning to expand its list of majors to include humanities and eventually establish a university, Optima School director Olga Bilodid told Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Thursday.
“Now there are five of them (specialties), but there is an intention to develop, and the range of specialties will definitely expand,” Bilodid said.
According to her, Optima College graduates receive a junior bachelor’s degree and have the opportunity to enter the college after both the 9th and 11th grade.
Belodid added that the creation of an Optima university is currently on the agenda for the future.
“We are persistently looking in this direction and think that this intention will be realized, but we still need to understand how to implement it in the realities of our country,” said the director of Optima School.
According to the website, Optima Distance College is a project of the largest distance school in Ukraine, Optima. The college offers five specialties: entrepreneurship and trade, psychology, computer science, marketing, and graphic design. The tuition fee is UAH 2 thousand per month, regardless of the specialty.
Hotel operator Optima (formerly Reikartz) plans to open a new property in Chernivtsi in May 2024.
According to the operator’s press service, the new hotel will be opened under the Optima Collection brand.
The six-story hotel will have 58 rooms.
The Optima Hotels & Resorts chain unites more than 80 hotels in Ukraine, Sweden, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Uzbekistan.
Starting in 2023, Reikartz is rebranding its hotel chain in Ukraine under the new name Optima Hotels & Resorts. The operator operated under the Raziotel (a chain of three-star economy hotels), Vita, Optima (wellness resorts and three-star hotels), as well as Reikartz Collection and Reikartz Hotels & Resorts (three-star-plus and four-star business and resort hotels) brands.
Optima Hotel Management LLC was established in 2008. According to Opendatabot, the company’s shareholders are Volodymyr Kashutin (Lviv, 99.9%) and Andriy Dema (Kyiv, 0.1%). Kashutin is listed as the ultimate beneficiary. At the same time, until 2019, the beneficiaries were Russian citizens Yuriy Vasin, Leonid Lavrentiev and Timur Rodionov.
According to the financial results for 2023, the company’s net profit amounted to UAH 7 million, compared to a loss in 2022. Revenue increased by 40.8% to UAH 445.8 million.
The Optima Distance School has announced that it has been forced to suspend the construction of an educational center near Kyiv due to unfounded accusations by law enforcement officials of illegal land acquisition.
Maria Miletska, founder and CEO of the Optima distance school, told Interfax-Ukraine at a press conference on Tuesday that the issue is the investigation by law enforcement agencies that accused her of illegally seizing a 4 hectare plot of land near Kyiv.
According to Miletska, the project has been suspended for at least four months.
For his part, Miletska’s lawyer, Oleksandr Protas, noted that, according to the accusations by law enforcement agencies, Miletska has no legal rights to the land plot, despite the fact that she purchased it on the secondary market at a market price.
Protas clarified that the land plot was alienated from the land fund of the Ministry of Defense six or seven years ago and has changed hands several times since then.
“As it turned out later, this land is under investigation because it became a source of enrichment for some officials. I can’t comment on whether this land was transferred to individuals legally or illegally, but Maria Miletska bought this land absolutely legally, at a market price. A company engaged in professional land search offered the land, all payments were made in non-cash form, and there were no comments from the state registrar or the notary who carried out the registration. And after the land was acquired, Maria Oleksandrivna, unfortunately, became a party to the criminal proceedings,” he said.
At the same time, the lawyer emphasized the “unprecedented pressure (on Miletska – IF-U) from the investigators who are investigating this case”.
“I was present during the searches that took place unexpectedly, I witnessed outright threats against me. There was no need to conduct such investigative actions as a search at all, because the documents that law enforcement officers needed were provided voluntarily,” he said.
Protas noted that “there are already two court decisions where Maria Oleksandrivna is recognized as an absolutely bona fide purchaser of this land.”
“The panel of judges took the side of our client that Maria Miletska did not alienate the land from the Ministry of Defense, that Miletska purchased it from individuals to whom the state had no claims until recently,” he said.
Protas clarified that the local village council distributed the land among its residents back in 2017, and until 2023, they were absolutely the legal owners of the land.
At the same time, Protas noted that his client has no grounds to apply to the ECHR so far, as all the possibilities for protection provided by national law have not been exhausted.
In turn, the founder of the Optima School, Latvian citizen Roberts Vaisla, noted that the school has already implemented several educational projects in Ukraine. These include the Optima Kids project, which provides educational materials and enables children to prepare for school, and a college that provides training in three specialties.
In addition, Optima has received Cambridge accreditation and is preparing content that allows Ukrainian children to study according to Cambridge standards and programs in Ukraine.
