The High School has completed a series of trainings under the professional development programme “Communication of European Integration: the Process of Creating a Communication Strategy and Action Plan”.

The trainings were held for three groups of students. The training was attended by 66 participants from 39 government agencies, including 15 participants from 8 ministries, 30 representatives of government agencies and services, and 21 participants from bureaus, inspectorates, foundations, etc. This year, the number of communication specialists and experts from international departments accounted for almost 73% of all participants, which is twice as many as last year.

The trainers were Ivetta Delikatna, key communications expert of the Association4You project, Cesar Herma, key expert on legislative approximation and translation of the Association4You project, Yaroslava Prokopenko, senior communications manager of the Reforms Delivery Office of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and Iryna Subota, information security and countering disinformation analyst.

The training participants identified the topics that they found most useful. These included countering Russian propaganda/disinformation, the SWOT method for drawing conclusions, the information field of European integration, the process of developing a communication strategy, and legal aspects of European integration. In general, the participants highly appreciated the course and its content, noting that the format was well structured and the information was provided in a clear and understandable manner. Participants also noted that the training contained interesting practical exercises.

It should be noted that the programme was developed by the High School in cooperation with the EU Project in Ukraine “Association4You” to develop a system of knowledge about the government’s communication tasks in the field of European integration and the Association Agreement, planning a communication strategy and skills to create action plans based on it.

The organisers of the training plan to continue to conduct such trainings and update them every six months to ensure that information is up-to-date and communication of European integration processes is effective.