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Arrival of Ukrainian trainees

Picture: AgrarKontakte International e.V.

The current war circumstances in Ukraine have unfortunately not allowed the trainee program with Ukraine in 2022 to take place as planned. However, despite difficult circumstances, at the end of July 2022, five Ukrainian vocational students from the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions were able to come to Southern Germany and start their traineeship.

Since the end of February, AKI has repeatedly received inquiries and offers of assistance from the agricultural host farms, directed at the Ukrainian vocational students as well as the former trainees and their families. Via our long-time partner in Ukraine – the project team of FABU ("Promotion of Vocational Training at Agricultural Colleges in Ukraine", funded by BMEL), in May there were requests from Ukrainian agricultural colleges whose vocational students wanted to do a traineeship on German dairy farms.

The five vocational students arrived in Stuttgart on July 24 and took part in the introductory seminar at the AKI office the next day. During this they gained useful insights into topics such as: everyday life in Germany, characteristics of agriculture in southern Germany, integration into the host families, the procedure of the traineeship and legal framework, managing the report books, etc.

The safety briefings on working in agriculture, which is traditionally conducted by AKI's deputy chairman Mr. Siegfried Schwab, were already given to the students in advance during an online meeting before they traveled to Germany.

In the evening of July 25, the trainees were picked up from their host families at the AKI office and traveled to their host farms in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria.

AgrarKontakte International (AKI) e.V. has been conducting traineeship programs with agricultural vocational schools in Ukraine since 2009 and has thus been able to support the practically oriented education and training of hundreds of Ukrainian vocational students.

We are very pleased that despite the difficult circumstances, at the end five vocational students were able to attend the traineeship program of 2022 and we are currently working on being able to implement the traineeship program with Ukraine on a larger scale again in 2023.

AgrarKontakte International e.V.
In front of the AKI office in Plieningen, Stuttgart: AKI Managing Director Falk Kullen, AKI Project Managers Anastasiia Fomina and Olga Rybakova with Ukrainian trainees
 

Olga Rybakova

Project Management