Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Zhytomyr community has received more than 16 thousand internally displaced persons. Both small and large businesses were relocated here.
Supporting entrepreneurs during the war is vital to preserving business, jobs, and economic recovery in Ukraine. That is why the Entrepreneurship Labs project was initiated in Zhytomyr, which aims to create a sustainable ecosystem for industrial support and development and help micro and small businesses scale up.
The project envisages arranging a production workshop for single-series and small-scale processing of wood, metal, polymers, composites, etc., and a coworking space for 24 people, which will be used jointly by workshop residents and relocated businesses. The workshop is planned to be free for visitors, and it will help microenterprises or self-employed individuals gain access to modern production infrastructure to develop a prototype of their product or start small-scale production.
The Entrepreneurship Lab project was among 12 winners of the grant competition for infrastructure rehabilitation under the Support for Rapid Economic Recovery of Ukrainian Municipalities (SRER) project implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine.
- Before making the project application, we previously held additional consultations and meetings with, among others, businesses located in Zhytomyr and studied their need for production equipment to scale or resume their business activities in the city of Zhytomyr,- said Borys Pakholiuk, director of the City Development Agency of the Zhytomyr City Council.
As of September 2024, work has begun on reсonstructing and repairing two premises allocated for the project.
The project has been added to the DREAM ecosystem - https://bit.ly/3BaDNdY Its total budget is UAH 22.3 million.
The DREAM ecosystem allows you to be more media and publicly visible on the all-Ukrainian map of restoration projects, showcase yourself, and talk about your project and its implementation progress. This platform is used by international partners, and it is important for them to see that the projects they support are being actively implemented and progressing, added Borys Pakholyuk.
The opening of the Entrepreneurship Lab in Zhytomyr is scheduled for March 2025.
According to the DREAM analytics module (https://bi.dream.gov.ua/), 186 projects from the Zhytomyr region with a total budget of UAH 1.47 billion have been added to the ecosystem.
The DREAM Project Office created the material within the GIZ Ukraine Sustainable Society Cluster framework, funded by the German Government and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
