Ukraine: Bendukidze Free Market Center champions the case for increasing economic understanding in young people
The Kyiv-based Bendukidze Free Market Center was one of EFI’s early country partners, and has been a stalwart companion from our early days as book translator and distributor, to our evolution into the driver of an economic and financial literacy campaign that now spans 11 countries.
BFMC was keen to add the Ukrainian edition of “Common Sense Economics” to its portfolio of introductory economics texts. Since the translation was published in late 2020, BFMC has used the book as a core element in its portfolio to substantially increase its impact on economic understanding, particularly with middle, high school and university students, and their teachers.
Since publication, thousands of copies of the book have been
downloaded from the EFI website. 2000
printed editions have also been distributed to schools and universities and
included in “gift boxes” for teachers. “Common Sense Economics” is embedded in
“Economics for Every Day”, an economic literacy course hosted on Prometheus,
the country’s leading educational platform. So far, more than 25,000 customers
have completed the course. The book is already recommended reading for students
of economics and of political science at several universities, including
National Taras Shevchenko University and Ivano-Frankivsk National Technical
University of Oil and Gas. In summer 2024, the Ministry of Education approved the book as
recommended reading for elective economics at Grades 8 & 9.
BFMC enjoys a strong and growing reputation with the
country’s teaching community. It boasts a range of innovative projects designed
to engage with, support and train educators, both with and without experience
of teaching economics. Right after the Russian invasion, it invited teachers to
compete for mini-grants, based on proposals to teach economics which harnessed
“Common Sense Economics”, EFI’s Teacher Toolkit and “Economics for Everyday”.
In the early months of the war, it added an Emergency Teacher Training program,
offering psychological support and immersive teaching techniques to teachers
for times of crisis. Its regional Economic Education Accelerators are an
immersive bootcamp program which has trained over 250 teachers in Poltava,
Dnipro and Kyiv, and help introduce Economics-related subjects in partnering
schools with the support of
educational investors Avrora Multimarket and mono. Ukraine is one of 3 countries taking part in a Teacher
Training Pilot co-funded by EFI and the Rising Tide Foundation which
aims to increase access to economics in secondary schools by providing teachers
with pedagogical training in an economic context. Almost 100 Ukrainian teachers
were trained this year. BFMC plans to double the numbers in 2025.
Supported by EFI, BFMC manages the [Economics Olympiad](https://economicsolympiad.org/) in Ukraine. BFMC registered 4,500
students in the first year, and the number of entrants more than doubled in
2024. Students compete in the face of power outages and air raid warnings,
travelling across the country to participate in the national round, which is
hosted by the Kyiv School of Economics. The competition is now promoted by the Ministry of
Education and the National Bank of Ukraine, helping BFMC to win the
confidence of local education departments. Growing numbers of donors are adding
their support and the Kyiv School of Economics offers full tuition and
accommodation scholarships to the 10 winners. “It might seem crazy that we launched a competition
in the middle of wartime’’, says Executive Director Nataliya Melnyk. “But so
many teachers and students thanked us for bringing the opportunity to them. EO
offers them hope, and some semblance of normalcy. And we will need economically
literate citizens to support the rebuild when this war is finally over. That is
why having EFI’s backing for our educational initiatives is so crucial”.
● Watch teachers in Ukraine making the case for the economic way of thinking (video)
● Why Ukraine’s high school students are embracing the economic way of thinking (video)
