The biopharmaceutical company “Biopharma” invests about $2 million annually in education; plans for this year include opening biology schools in Uzhhorod and Lviv, company president Kostyantyn Yefimenko told the “Interfax-Ukraine” news agency.
“We invest about $2 million in education every year. We have already built two biology schools in Kyiv and Bila Tserkva. After school, the children come to us for extracurricular classes. Ten hours a week: three hours of math, three hours of chemistry, and four hours of biology. It’s free for the children, but they’re taught by top-notch instructors,” said Yefimenko.
He noted, however, that the goal of this project is not to train a large number of employees specifically for the company.
“We don’t need a very large number of people at Biopharma; our revenue per employee is over one million dollars. We need talented people, but not a large number of them. I’m doing this as a charitable project; I want to build 25 such schools in Ukraine. I want these people to start creating their own companies in the biotech sector. This is impossible to achieve with the current level of school and university education. It requires people with highly specialized training. And I hope that we will be able to train such people; they will come to us so that we can help them or invest in them, and create these companies together with them. My goal is to create the conditions for such an ecosystem,” Yefimenko noted.
He announced that the immediate plans include opening two more biology schools, in Uzhhorod and Lviv, which will begin operations this fall.
“Biofarma” is a Ukrainian biotechnology company engaged in plasma collection and specializing in the production of plasma for the manufacture of blood products.
biology schools, biotechnology, EDUCATION, Yefimenko, БІОФАРМА
