Preface
The importance of systematic efforts to reintegrate military personnel into civilian life under martial law stems from the following:
- despite the absence of demobilization from the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a significant number of service members are discharged each month into the reserve or retired (due to health reasons, age, family circumstances, etc.), who remain capable of working and wish to transition to civilian life;
- military personnel discharged to the reserve who have participated in combat operations suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders. The most effective way to address these issues is to help them successfully reintegrate into civilian life;
- given the objective decline in the state’s economic capacity, the risk of heightened social and political tensions within Ukraine is significantly increasing. This problem may become particularly acute once martial law is lifted. Therefore, investing resources in the reintegration of military personnel right now constitutes a form of investment in the country’s socio-political stability during and following the conclusion of Russian armed aggression.
The History of the Project's Initiation and Implementation
The “League of Officers” NGO, since 2003 has a successful track record of organizing a full cycle of social and professional adaptation for military personnel of the Ukrainian Defense Forces who have been discharged to the reserve or retired, starting from the moment they decide to leave military service, followed by the provision of psychological support, retraining in civilian professions, and assistance in finding employment in their place of residence. Thus, between 2003 and 2021, as part of this work, we retrained and placed over 12,000 military personnel discharged to the reserve or retired in civilian professions.
This massive success was made possible by:
- systematic cooperation between the NGO “League of Officers” and international governmental and non-governmental organizations that have shown and continue to show an interest in supporting Ukraine in the socio-economic sphere. Our organization’s partners in this area of activity at various times have included: the Embassy of Canada in Ukraine, the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway in Ukraine, the International Renaissance Foundation, the OSCE, and NATO;
- establishing and maintaining partnerships with 18 higher education institutions in Ukraine—located in the Odesa, Kherson, Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, and Chernihiv regions—to retrain military personnel discharged to the reserve or retired for civilian professions;
- the Memorandum of Cooperation signed with the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine regarding social support for military personnel scheduled for discharge to the reserve or retirement;
- a clearly structured organizational framework comprising: 1) A social protection, employment, and psychological support service; 2) A certified vocational training center with a highly qualified teaching staff; 3) The necessary facilities and resources to organize and conduct retraining programs for military personnel and their families in various regions of Ukraine;
In addition, as part of a NATO project, our team developed and implemented the “From Combat to Home” program to provide psychological support to military personnel discharged from service as they undergo retraining for civilian careers.
The “League of Officers” NGO strictly adheres to educational and training standards that ensure high-quality retraining at designated institutions of higher education (universities) for military personnel who have been discharged to the reserve or retired:
- the training program covers the core areas of higher education, including the necessary set of courses required to fully master the specialization in which the retraining will take place;
- the university’s teaching staff, who are involved in the educational process, have extensive, long-standing experience teaching specific subjects and have repeatedly received positive feedback from our students regarding their professional expertise;
- Classes will be held in well-equipped classrooms; in the event of an air raid alert, a bomb shelter is available..
The educational process will be accompanied by the following activities:
- psychologists from our organization, who will conduct a series of psychological training sessions aimed at boosting motivation for socialization and helping combat veterans overcome post-traumatic stress;
- employment counselors to teach them the necessary practical skills, such as how to write a resume; how to handle phone calls and interviews with employers; and how to search for job openings online and through other sources, etc.
