Concern Stirol sponsored Gorlovka team participating in the 15th Ukrainian School Tournament

Concern Stirol being part of OSTCHEM has volunteered sponsorship of Gorlovka city team to participate in the 15th Ukrainian School Tournament. The team including 15 most gifted students took part in 4 academic disciplines – chemistry, biology, mathematics and physics.
 
The Olympiads held in four Ukrainian cities (Khmelnytsky, Chernivtsi, Kherson and Chernigov) involved 70 teams coming from Ukraine and the CIS countries. According to the competition rules, the city teams are composed of municipal and regional Olympiads winners. Concern Stirol started its support to the tournament back in September when the Concern offered sponsorship to regional and municipal competitions. At the end of October, a final decision on providing sponsorship to Gorlovka team and to the final round of the competition was made.
 
Corporate social responsibility is becoming an indispensible part of modern business philosophy, says Alexander Khalin, OSTCHEM’s General Director: “Large businesses realize their responsibility before its inner and outer media and give away part of its revenues to public needs. I think that big companies must help their communities. For this reason, we have been supporting a number of projects aimed at school education promotion,” said Mr. Khalin.
 
Concern Stirol’s support to school education is not the first initiative from Dmitry Firtash’s companies seeking to improve quality of school learning. It has been the second consecutive year that the Head of the Board of Directors of Group DF has been implementing the national project “Support to School Chemistry Education” pursuing the goal of chemistry popularization across Ukrainian high schools.
 
“This year we decided to support students from our city, the Gorlovka city team. Notably, in addition to supporting young chemists as we did before, this time the support will also be extended to biologists, physicists and mathematicians. OSTCHEM and Concern Stirol will continue their support to bright kids. Hopefully, their future life will be successful and they will have more opportunities to glorify their native city,” said Sergey Pavliuchuk, Chairman of Concern Stirol.
 
According to him, Concern Stirol’s support did not only confine to covering all costs related to transportation, accommodations and board, as well as paying participation fees. The Concern also took on the cost of special uniforms production and of organizing preparatory trainings for schoolchildren. The trainings were hosted by faculty representatives of respective specialty colleges and universities. For instance, consultations for Gorlovka students were conducted by teachers and professors from Donetsk Economics and Chemical Technologies College and academics from Dnepropetrovsk Chemical Engineering University. Olympiad participants did not let their tutors down: three teams returned home with Diplomas and merit certificates.
 
“By providing systemic support to a variety of educational projects we want to create the environment nourishing the talents growth in small towns. The chemical sector today requires increasingly more qualified personnel. What we are doing is conducive to the goal of raising a new generation of young people who we will be happy to eventually offer employment to,” explained Alexander Khalin.
 
As part of the effort towards implementation of the Support School Chemical Learning Program Group DF has already financed a series of massive projects intended to improve the quality of Ukrainian school education. In particular, OSTCHEM has sponsored the final round of Ukrainian Chemistry Olympiad for 10 and 11-graders. On top of that, in 2011-2012, OSTCHEM acquired and donated chemical lab equipment and reagents for 26 Ukrainian schools having trained Ukrainian Olympiads winners. The next step was acquisition of chemical equipment for the Ukrainian national chemistry Olympic team. In the summer of 2012 Group DF became a General Sponsor of the National School Olympic Team representing Ukraine at the 44th International Chemical Olympiad held in Washington D.C. (USA).