 to Cooper Union. What's happening with human rights around the world on Think Tech Live broadcasting from our downtown studio in Honolulu, Hawaii and Moana, New York. I'm your host, Joshua Cooper. Today, we'll be looking at the UN Global Gold number four, quality education in war, but focusing on education as a human right. Today, we're fortunate enough to be joined by Katarina. Katarina, thank you so much for joining us and being a living example of why education is so important for the future. Oh, it's so great to be here, Josh. Thank you for having me. No. Right now, the United Nations high level political forum is taking place in New York, and one of the most important things they'll be discussing of the 17 global goals is goal number four, which focuses on quality education. And that's why I think it's so important what you're doing because while bombs are dropping and schools are being destroyed, teachers remain committed to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals number four, quality education in Ukraine. And education is definitely important for the future of Ukraine and a new initiative connecting Ukrainian youth with English speakers to continue your educational pursuit of knowledge is exactly what you're doing. What inspired you to begin such an amazing endeavor? So I used to work for another nonprofit with Ukrainian high schoolers as a mentor. So I was working one on one with very intelligent and motivated Ukrainians. And I was shocked to see that these kids, excuse me, who had been studying English, often since first grade, could not speak at all. It was, it was a huge surprise. And it caused me to delve into the education system in Ukraine, how English was taught. And I realized that, unfortunately, while many Ukrainian students do study English in school, it's a lot of rote learning, memorizing conjugations and grammar and vocabulary words. And there's never an opportunity to actually learn to use that knowledge and to become fluent. And at the same time, as I'm sure you know, English is the global language for, you know, academic and professional opportunities in any field. So it seemed like this huge gap and something I saw personally mentoring these young students. So I started looking for resources for how they could help improve their speaking for free. And there weren't any. So I decided to start one. And this is actually, you know, before the war, it was just before the pandemic, March 2020. And with the pandemic, the world sort of went online and our program exploded because it was designed as an online program from the start. And I think we're very lucky that we had been set up to operate online, had been doing this for a couple of years, because when the war came, you know, the need skyrocketed due to the disruptions that you mentioned. It's amazing you thought of working with thousands of Ukrainian youth at the time of the horrific war against Ukraine. And this innovative initiative supports students surviving a horrific war in their own homeland. And you're continuing to make sure that they can exercise their human right to education. What are some of the things that you've been able to do? And how did you were able to connect the people who spoke English with the people in Ukraine who desired to? And what are some of those exciting results that have happened because of that? Yeah, so we started working with just high school and college students at the beginning. And there's a huge demand from students in the US to volunteer at many schools and some colleges it's required, at others it's heavily encouraged. But often students don't have a ton of professional experience or skills. So they are shut out of really high impact volunteer opportunities. So the way we designed our program is very accessible. It's fully online. You don't need any experience, any skills, you don't need to know any Ukrainian. We take everyone age 14 and up. So there was a lot of interest here in the US in helping out and getting involved. Because quite frankly, there weren't a lot of other appealing volunteer opportunities very often for these students. With the war, we were able to expand to work with volunteers of all ages because there was such a huge level of interest in helping Ukrainians. And again, not a lot of opportunities to do so, right? So if you think of your average American, you're all about the war in Ukraine. They want to help, but what are they going to do? They're not going to be able to fly over to Ukraine. They're not able to donate huge amounts of money. There's really not a tangible way for them to help, except Engine, which is again open to everyone fully online. Just one hour a week, you pick the day and time. So it kind of fits into any schedule. And we have now volunteers from students to corporate volunteers to retired people from age 14 to age 89. I think I just saw someone on the database. And so that's how we've been able to reach almost 9,000 students in Ukraine through the generosity of our incredible volunteers. And the results have been beyond my wildest expectations, really. It's one hour a week for a few months, and you think, well, what's that going to do? But it does a lot because this one-on-one format really allows for very rapid growth for full customization to where the student is at and what their goals are. And so we really are seeing objectively measured improvement in students in just three months. And then there's those who stay for six months, nine months a year, and they improve more and more. So their English language fluency goes up, but also their intercultural skills, their ability to communicate with someone from a different background, and what's very important now with the war, just sort of being able to tell their story and have someone in a different country, have someone in the United States who listens and who cares and to feel heard, to feel like they're not alone, I think is also another really important dimension of it that goes beyond the language learning kind of complements that primary goal of language learning. Absolutely. I mean, you can see with the language, also then they're then able to express what they're going through and then able then to share that with the world because the truth is it's so hard to imagine what is happening right there. And so it's really important to think what we can do and how we can go forward. And how many did you say that you're actually doing now? So we worked with almost 9,000 students since launch. Wow, 9,000, and just from an idea, right? So what was the impetus for this innovative initiative? How did you then be able to put that together because if you think about everything going on in the war and being able to connect, it's exciting though that you were able to then bring people together, have people learn their language and continue forward. Yeah, I think after the very beginning, when it was just me trying to find the solution for the few students I was mentoring back in early 2020, I very soon saw the opportunity to grow this to a national level, to scale it bigger than any sort of similar program has been scaled before, which is hard, but it's important because then we can really transform the country. So I very early on developed the vision of helping transform Ukraine's economy using education, using this program to create an entire generation of Ukrainians who are fluent in English, who have these intercultural skills, who are ready to work and partner with their counterparts abroad in business and science and education and the arts and whatever professional field they're going in. And if you think about European countries where English fluency is high, you think about Norway, the Netherlands, countries like that. Economically, they are so advanced and that was the template for me what I wanted to help transform Ukraine into. With the war, we're not talking so much about economic growth, we're talking about rebuilding and that's become only that much more important. So the thinking has shifted a little bit, but really it's the same idea that we need to get enough students, we need to grow big enough, at least 100,000 is my goal, to really see nationwide scale and national effects and help rebuild and address the horrible damage that's been done in just a few short months, which will only unfortunately continue to grow. It's a fact that Ukraine will rely on its allies abroad, on its partners to rebuild, again, thinking about partnerships with businesses that will invest in Ukraine, with governments that will give aid, with architecture firms that will design the new schools and residential buildings that have been destroyed, literally whatever field or area you think about, you're going to need English and you're going to need international connection and that's what we're providing. No, that's an amazing example. I was actually just at the Oslo Freedom Forum with the former First Lady of Ukraine and they were actually talking about how certain cities in Italy and certain places were actually saying they were going to rebuild specific theaters and specific opera houses and it is exciting to see the world coming together, but what you're focusing on is absolutely crucial because your innovative initiatives support students surviving a war in their own homeland, but also continue to exercise their human rights education at the same time and never stopping and I think that also might also provide a seat of hope because they see everything going on around them, but know that not only is it some headline news of Biden proposing something or other people doing things, but it's everyday people sharing and caring and reaching out and being able to then share that we all can do. We can all help teach English, we can all do something and make a difference and I think that's what's so inspiring about your initiative. Yeah, it's very grassroots, right? It's not top-down at all. There is no large organization sponsoring this, I wish. That would make my life easier, but yes, it's very much thousands of regular people from all walks of life, very diverse in terms of ethnicity, age, gender, just any demographic you look at. I'm continually amazed when I sometimes sit in and interview potential volunteers just with the stories I hear. I talk to an army veteran, I talk to grandmothers, I talk to kids in high school have all sorts of different interests and stories. Immigrants, Americans who have whose families have lived here for generations, most of them have no connection to Ukraine at all. So having, you know, seeing that interest and that passion for helping Ukrainians is absolutely inspiring to me as well. And, you know, you mentioned the human right to education and I think that's so important. Unfortunately, what I've seen a lot in the last few months is people tend to sort of discount that or forget about it. So there's a lot of focus on humanitarian aid. So, you know, let's evacuate people from a war zone, let's give them food, let's give them temporary shelter, which of course is so important as well. But then it's kind of like, well, what's the next step? You know, because if you just give humanitarian aid, you're turning people into permanent victims. They're standing in line for hours every day to get, you know, food handouts and living in, you know, in the basement of a school and that's just not sustainable long term. So where's the investment in education and giving them the skills that they need to support themselves to help rebuild their country? There's so much demand. And yet, you know, I don't think there's enough opportunities for people. I don't think there's enough, you know, funding or support, frankly, it's something we're really struggling with. I've been rejected, you know, from a few grants just in the past few weeks, because they say we only help with humanitarian aid. What you're doing is not as important. And to me, I think education is equally important. I think it complements, you know, this short term, let's get the person out of the war zone, let's stabilize them. But then you just need to give them skills. And I think people in Ukraine recognize that because they're coming, you know, begging to be accepted into this program. And it just breaks my heart that I have to turn so many people away because of, you know, capacity limitations. I'm hoping that, you know, there's more realization as time goes on that initiatives like ours, you know, and there's others not in English language, we're the only one doing this, but education in Ukraine more broadly, that are trying to fill this gap that are doing really good work. And I think they need all the support they can get, you know, right up along there with the humanitarian aid. No, and I think what you're sharing is something I heard just recently at an important conference that when you look at what used to exist with refugees, it was warehousing. And that really doesn't help. And what you're trying to do is really bring global goal number four, while the education alive all the time. So that was not just sitting around waiting. So for the war to end, but bettering themselves and also learning new skills. And in some ways, I'm sure you might have stories to share. Also forgetting for maybe a moment for that hour, how devastating and what is going on in their lives and how their lives are being utterly destroyed. But for that hour, they're talking to someone they're learning. And I think it might plant that seed of hope of what's possible afterwards. Whereas if you were in it all the time, you could see how there would definitely be a culture sort of despair and concern. But I think what you're doing is it's making the actions happen now for every individual's lives to be better, but showing how it's possible. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, we're really empowering people in multiple ways, right? What a lot of our students can do is share their stories. We've had a number of students who have gone on to TV or radio in the United States, were able to speak to US audiences in English because they've gone through our program. Some of them have gone, you know, on national television, you know, Fox News or NBC, literally millions of Americans hearing this random 16-year-old from Harkey tell their story, which would not be possible without our program. And you can imagine how that girl feels. Now she's not just a refugee running away and losing her home, but she feels like she's a fighter. She feels like she's making a difference. And we had dozens of stories like that towards the beginning of the war, which was really inspiring and powerful. We've organized events where our students go and they talk to an American school. And so again, there they are in the Zoom in front of a room of, you know, 20 or 50 or 100 American students sharing their stories in English and really raising awareness and feeling like they're contributing. And then in the longer term, especially with our adult students, so we've started working with young adults as well, it's empowering them to get new jobs even now, not even when the war ends. But right now, if you have someone who is an experienced professional, and the only thing missing is that English fluency a few months in our program really can make the difference between unemployment and the job, which now supports an entire family, right? Not just our students, but their whole family. Because there are many foreign companies that are happy to hire Ukrainian refugees or Ukrainians, even in Ukraine, right, working remotely, but they need them to speak English, they need them to be able to communicate with their colleagues in English, right? Do their job in to read English, they're going to be checking for that. And the Ukrainians are actually, you know, very educated, very skilled, generally workers. So very often really English is the only gap, the only thing that's keeping them from getting a job. And again, I'm leaving those, those lines for food and renting an apartment rather than, you know, being wear, wear house somewhere with other refugees and building a new life for themselves. So yeah, I'm very excited about how we're empowering people, you know, and these different ways big and small students, young adults, everyone we work with. And yeah, I think, I think that's really a big part of our mission and our work. And it really does embody the human rights approach to the sustainable development goals, because it's thinking of the individual and focusing on what is possible. And I really do believe as you spoke, as you pointed out, it shows also the interconnectedness of all the global goals. We're talking about global goal number four called education. But then by excelling in goal number four, you're also talking about SDG number eight of decent working and economic growth. And really, you are the perfect embodiment of global goal number 17 of partnerships, individual just having an idea, and then be able to create an initiative. And now you really have an institution where you can better the lives of people on a daily basis, having to endure probably one of the most difficult times ever in their lives. Yeah, yeah, I think it's true, you know, obviously, when we started this, I was very much focused on education. And that was, you know, looking at the sustainable development goals, I actually remember like, this is where we're at. But yes, as we've evolved over the last couple of years, you know, it's very true. It's very, it's very much covering different areas in, you know, as we expanded to older people for whom it's not, you know, in five years, I'm going to get a better job. It's like I need a job right now, I'm going to go through engine and I will get a better job right now. Partnerships for sure. And I have to add that we are partnering with many schools and universities in Ukraine. We have 86 partners at this point, mostly schools, some universities, some nonprofits all around Ukraine, including some occupied areas, which is very important for us to support and keep our relationships with educational institutions there that are being, you know, targeted and then destroyed by the Russian occupiers. And those partnerships allow us to bring the program to more students and to really support these educational institutions in improving the opportunities they're giving their students. And we're also partnering with universities and schools and some corporations here in the United States, which again help us grow the program, bring it to more volunteers. So yes, partnerships have been sort of a core way of the way we do work. We are very open to, you know, working with anyone in any way that's mutually beneficial. And I think that's very important, you know, not to be an island to release yourself as part of a very interconnected global network. No, I could see how definitely even at the class I'm teaching on comparative politics in the fall at university, there's service learning. And that's the main thing we do, because it's that really embodiment of the Olelo Noyau of volunteering to help people of Ukraine, they gain so much by volunteering. And maybe that's one side as well. It shows the symbiotic relationship of service learning and the importance of everyone understanding the solidarity that we really all share together for a better world. Yes, I think that the benefit to the volunteers, you know, it's not obviously it's not the main mission. It's a secondary mission, but it's so important to me as well. And so from the first days, I would be thinking, you know, how can I make this valuable for the volunteers? It makes sense because I want them to come back. I want them to tell their friends and many do. We have people who come in through service learning programs, you know, official programs at their universities, but then they will stay long after that semester ends. They will tell several friends. And to me, that's so powerful because it shows that they're having a good experience. So yes, we wanted to be rewarding. We wanted to be educational. And, you know, and it's also fun, you get to meet a new person and you get to make their life better in a few short months. And you get to see that, right? It's very, very tangible. It's not like I'm just writing a check and you don't really know what happens to it. It's not even like donating some items. And, you know, you are teaching someone skill, right? That will be with them for the rest of their lives. You build a relationship with that person. In the best case, they become close friends and they stay in touch, you know, even after they're both done with the program. A few of them have met up in real life, which has been so amazing to see. So yes, definitely. I think any, you know, any kind of volunteering should be valuable and beneficial to the volunteer as well. And and we, we've all had that as a focus since our first days launching the program. And I understand that I'm at the UN expert mechanism in the rights of Indigenous peoples now. And there's many Crimean Tatars from Ukraine. And one person came up to me that was in a class I taught in 2014. And we obviously haven't seen each other through the company. He said, I am here now because of the class you taught. I am able to represent my people at the UN just from one week that we spent together. And it was just one of those moments where you're like, wow, you know, it was it was one week in your life, but it's so exciting to see how it made such a huge impact on this individual. And now the work they're doing, the ripple effect to actually realize rights was almost overwhelming because there's this individual sitting in front of you and you're like, wonderful, you know, I can't believe that. And what can I do more to actually have such an impact and make sure that more people can know what their rights are and then exercise them. And what you're doing is definitely showing that global goal number four isn't just the logo, but actually something that everyone can contribute to with something they've been able to learn. So to each one, teach one. Yeah, I think it's such an important goal because when you're working with young people, right, the the rest of their lives, they're going to be having, hopefully, right, a big impact of their own and you can't predict that you don't know, right. I mean, they're, I know we have students who will go through a program and, you know, they'll take something out of it and they won't give anything back. And that's fine by me. But if we have even a few students, right, of the many thousands we worked with that go and then, you know, change the world in their own right. And I've helped them do that. I think that's that's extremely important. And it's, you know, it's it's also a big part of what we're doing, right, we're helping these students, but then we're sort of catalysts of further change that they that they create as they go out into the world with the skills that we give them. Yeah, the UN 2030 Agenda guarantees all people around the planet access to the 17 UN Global Goals and UN Sustainable Development Goal number four is focusing on quality education and to think that Ukrainian teachers and civil society are creating opportunities to connect Ukrainian youth even in the Molo War just shows the power of what education is and what's possible when we dream of what we can do with individuals, but collectively to create and be catalysts for positive social changes you shared. Yeah, I mean, I'm so inspired by all the initiatives out there. My friend Anna Navasad, who used to be the education minister in Ukraine is working on an initiative to rebuild all of the schools that were destroyed in Cheneyhev in the north of Ukraine, which was under attack by the Russians for quite a while in the spring, and has been liberated now and hopefully, you know, for good and can start thinking about rebuilding and they're doing such great work already, you know, planning out these new 21st century schools. Teach for Ukraine is another amazing organization affiliated with Teach for America here in the US, so they're bringing really talented teachers into schools in small town and villages and again, they barely stopped, you know, despite the war. They were very affected by the war and yet they keep on doing their work. So I think you're right, you know, this goes beyond engine. I think Ukrainians are so dedicated to rebuilding to understand that education is the key part of that and they are just not stopping, you know, and kids are learning online when their schools are destroyed. They're just very committed to to keeping it going, to not letting Russia destroy their right to an education, both parents, children, teachers, the Ministry of Education. I'm seeing so much good and it's, you know, something that keeps me going during, frankly, it's a very difficult time, right? If you look at the big picture of how the war is going, it's not great but, you know, we just keep doing what we can in our education space and seeing the progress there and hoping that it will eventually help to, you know, to rebuild Ukraine when the war is over. It's true and right now as we look, I mean, there is some positive aspects with the Russian invasion of Ukraine was strongly condemned in the Birmingham Declaration adopted just yesterday by the Organization for Security Cooperation Europe Parliamentary Assembly at its annual session and the declaration did refer to the Russian invasion quote as a gross violation of fundamentals of international law and quote, end quote, a flagrant violation not only of sovereignty of Ukraine and its territorial integrity but as an attack against the human rights and fundamental freedoms most notably of the right to life of the people of Ukraine. So that's crucial. Also Russia did default on the foreign debt payments for the first time in over a century but as you said, those are headlines and what you're focusing on is every person and I think as you said people can write a check or give something but by donating their time and sharing what they know they can have a longer impact and be able to have a huge difference in the lives that also affect people's dignity to think of what's possible in their own lives. Yeah, absolutely and I encourage anyone you know who is listening to this and who cares about Ukraine to check out Engine or any other way that they can get involved you know that matches their skills and what they're interested in because there's really no substitute for that hands on help and it really makes a difference every single person every single hour. It also reminds me when you think about it what is possible because I actually had interviewed an amazing person who's building rebuilding one of those girls in China he's school number 20 I believe or 21 and he's very much it's saying that the bombing has stopped and they're rebuilding and our goal is when our semester starts in Hawaii in September that they would actually be able to have people back in school. So it's not only hoping and saying one day but it's actually taking actions right now and he sort of has that same spirit I would say of the Ukrainian people even regarding Snake Island right that they were able to regain Snake Island it's not what we all want and we want the war to be over as soon as possible but it's amazing to see the resilience of the people and their commitment to make sure that they as individuals can positively contribute to the rebuilding of their country but that the country can be part of a larger coalition of democracy and dedication to a better way of life for all people on the planet. Yeah that's what we're praying for every day exactly that I think every every Ukrainian in Ukraine and abroad so let's just hope let's just hope it happens. Well I know the world will be better by every hour of class that you offer to people and we thank you for making global goal number four reality and not just empty promises on a piece of paper and so we thank you for all that work and we look forward to hearing more and maybe even featuring some of your students sharing their amazing skills to tell their stories in future episodes of Cooper Union. Thank you so much for having me it was great speaking with you. All right Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook Instagram Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktech hawaii.com Mahalo