International Online Forum “Ukrainian Identity in the European Education Area: From Challenges to Joint Solutions”

On 3 September 2026 the International Online Forum “Ukrainian Identity in the European Education Area: From Challenges to Joint Solutions” took place, organised by the National Congress of Ukrainian Associations in Italy (CNAUI) together with “Tvoya Shkola”, a school for children from Ukraine. The event brought together more than 170 participants and became one of this year’s most prominent international platforms devoted to preserving Ukrainian identity abroad.

At a time when hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children are studying outside Ukraine, preserving language, culture and national identity is no longer purely a matter of education — it is a matter of the nation’s future. The forum showed that this cause now unites not only teachers and civil society organisations but also the Church, diplomacy and the state: the opening was attended by representatives of the Ukrainian Church in Italy, the Embassy of Ukraine in Italy, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine. Such high-level participation confirmed that preserving the identity of Ukrainians abroad is recognised as a strategic priority rather than a private initiative of individual schools or associations.

Fr. Maksym Kolodchak, who is responsible for school pastoral care at the Catechetical Office of the Apostolic Exarchate, gave his blessing to the forum’s work. He stressed the importance of cooperation between the Church and cultural and educational centres and expressed his readiness for dialogue and cooperation with the Congress.

Tamara Cherpakova, Minister-Counsellor at the Embassy of Ukraine in Italy, highlighted the importance of the Congress’s day-to-day work, noted the large number of people interested in the Forum and observed that even small steps taken by the Ukrainian community abroad matter enormously for preserving Ukrainian identity outside the country and for the future of Ukraine as a whole.

Nataliia Movshovych, Deputy Minister of Culture of Ukraine for European Integration, noted that in wartime preserving Ukrainian culture becomes a strategic issue. Historically, Ukraine has always been a European country, so today there is no choice to be made between Europe and Ukraine. European integration is about the natural development of Ukrainian identity abroad, which is why Ukrainian communities abroad are extremely important partners of the Ukrainian state: they know the needs of their local communities best. She therefore called for building a strategic partnership, thanked the Congress for the work it has done in this direction and stressed the importance of what cultural and educational institutions abroad have achieved.

Zlata Bezkorovaina, Head of the General Secondary Education Department within the Ministry’s School Education Directorate, greeted the Forum participants on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. She thanked the Congress for the opportunity to speak at the Forum and noted that preserving Ukrainian culture and education abroad opens the way home for our children. She emphasised that the Ministry currently has many initiatives under way, affirmed its readiness to work together towards the common goal, and proposed setting up joint groups straight away to help Ukrainian teachers carry out educational work abroad, where teaching materials and ideas could be shared.

In her address, CNAUI President Lara Levchun used the Congress’s own work to show how a civil society organisation can build a dialogue with the highest levels of government: the first forum (1 September 2024), held by the Congress’s Education Department, gave rise to an initiative that by 5 September 2024 had become a Petition to the Senate of the Italian Republic, proposing that Ukrainian be introduced as a foreign language in Italian schools, first as an optional subject and later as a full curricular one. On 24 September 2024 the petition (No. 223) was officially announced at a plenary sitting of the Senate. The second forum (31 August 2025) launched a new Congress project, “100×100: Bridges of Education”. During that forum the participants concluded that Italy and Ukraine had no bilateral agreements on educational partnership and drew up a further petition, for the creation of a National Programme of School Partnerships between Italy and Ukraine, which was considered at a plenary sitting of the Senate of the Italian Republic on 3 March 2026. At this year’s Forum, Liubov Shynkarchuk, curator of “100×100: Bridges of Education”, announced that the project is being scaled up and that a new initiative, “100×100: Plus”, is being launched.

What made this year’s format unique was the combination of voices that are rarely heard from the same platform: government officials, associate and full professors from Ukrainian universities, headteachers and founders of Ukrainian schools in Italy and across Europe, and respected experts in their fields — from specialists in fairy-tale therapy and children’s psycho-emotional rehabilitation to researchers in education law and artificial intelligence in education. Just as important was the event’s truly European scale: experts from other European countries — Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom — joined the discussion. This made it possible to compare the experience of different education systems and to identify the shared challenges facing Ukrainian education and culture across the continent, from the legal status of the Ukrainian language to children’s integration into two education systems at once.

The forum went beyond discussing problems — it was designed as a platform for shaping joint action. The very logic of the programme makes this clear: from “bringing the community together” to “joint projects”, from “experience” to “joint solutions”. Projects such as “100×100 Plus”, on pooling educational resources internationally, and the “Tvoya Shkola” initiative, presented by Oksana Slovik as an “ecosystem of national identity”, marked a shift from scattered local efforts to systematic, long-term cooperation. Fittingly, the forum closed not with summary reports but with a dedicated session, “From Challenges to Joint Solutions: What Can We Do Together?”, presenting the directions for future cooperation — a concrete move from dialogue to action.

This lays the groundwork for broader partnership between Ukrainian educational and civic institutions in Italy, Ukraine and other European countries, and for developing common approaches to protecting Ukrainian children’s right to education in their native language in the context of European integration.

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