The opening ceremony of the Ukrainian Catholic University’s program Good Governance was held in the Lviv City Council on April 10, 2014. Forty-five professionals from the Ivano-Frankivsk, Mykolayiv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Odessa, Ternopil, and Vinnytsia oblasts are participating in the program.
Program participants were welcomed by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy, who said: “Being in power is a very big test. People who are in power must have the special grace of God to feel the calling, realize themselves and justify their missions. If you have the grace of God and it is your calling, the whole world will help you. I hope that the course will give you new knowledge and open up opportunities. We are willing to meet with you and offer our help.”
By launching a program for public administrators, UCU is realizing one of the three areas of its operations, among which are reform of higher education and dialogue between East and West. Taras Dobko, First Vice Rector of the University, stressed that the Good Governance initiative should be seen as a response to the social order: “It deals primarily with the methods, style, and culture of interaction between society and government, state and community. Maidan highlighted the enormous positive energy of capable, creative, and inquisitive people who can change the face of the country; after all, people are a country’s main resource. And the task of the state is to create conditions so that this human potential is revealed, so it works at full capacity.”
In the future, the three-month modular program will be the basis for the start of a year-and-a-half-long master’s program in public administration.
According to Nataliya Bordun, the Director of the UCU Institute of Leadership and Management, one of the goals of the Good Governance program is communication — to form an environment and community of graduates who will receive support in their future activities.
Sophia Opatska, the Director of UCU’s Lviv Business School, stated that the project emerged as a response to the needs that exist in Ukrainian society, to the reformation of public administration. “Our program will train people who work in state or local governments in innovative thinking, helping them understand how to implement changes in these structures and always acting in the interests of the community and the country.”
Before starting the Good Governance program, participants signed an “Ethical Obligation” document. Volodymyr Turchynovsky, Director of the International Institute for Ethics and Contemporary Issues, said: “With these ethical obligations, we invite you to start the program in order to build a new and good community. We must be responsible in the public space.”
