The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation Received International Recognition for Fighting the Coronavirus

Rinat Akhmetov was the first to give a helping hand to the country in the fight against the pandemic. In February 2020, he pooled the resources of his Charitable Foundation, FC Shakhtar and other SCM businesses and allocated more than UAH 450 million to help the country fight the coronavirus. The project Digital Physical Educational, which is part of the initiative Fighting COVID-19 in Ukraine, has received a prestigious international award.

The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation became a winner in two categories of the prestigious IPRA Golden World Awards. The contest was founded in 1990 by the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) to assess the best communication projects in terms of their creativity, quality of strategy and results achieved. The educational series produced by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation won in the categories Sport and NGO campaign.

‘The Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, FC Shakhtar and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine joined their efforts to help the country during the lockdown. Indeed, only together we can successfully counter the threat of the coronavirus pandemic. The result of our synergy is a unique project that will be useful to every Ukrainian schoolchild. This is a series of videos for YouTube and Instagram about how important it is to remember about sports and a healthy lifestyle. Paradoxically, the project reaching out through gadgets and smartphones that every teenager has managed to motivate them to break away from the screens and pay attention to their physical shape. That is why these video lessons will remain relevant after the lockdown. To reach the hearts and minds of schoolchildren, we took a truly amazing step. We invited a whole “star team”. These are world football stars Andriy Pyatov and Serhiy Kryvtsov, as well as popular showmen Oleh Maslyuk and Yevhen Yanovych. I am sure that no other motivational project can boast of such a stellar line-up,’ said Yuliia Yershova, Chief Communications Officer of the Foundation.

‘It was very unusual and nice to hear that our joint project with the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation has received international recognition. I am sure that this is a well-deserved award because there were no such projects in Ukraine before. Everything was made for the first time, amidst the pandemic. Speaking in general, I really like the friendship, the partnership that connects the Club and the Foundation for many years. Last year, we helped doctors fight the coronavirus together. We donated COVID-19 tests and equipment to hospitals. I am confident that this successful cooperation will allow us to do many more good things,’ said Andriy Pyatov, captain of FC Shakhtar.

‘The project Digital Physical Education has become the materialization of our cool urge to do something useful and something going from the heart during the pandemic. And since we did not think about any awards then, it is twice as nice that our educational series received recognition. This is great, for sure! And I remember how many schoolchildren tagged me in their stories during the lockdown. Children wrote that they started repeating after us and doing sports, while following the lockdown rules. In my opinion, this is the main victory,’ says Yevhen Yanovych, an actor of Mamahohotala comedy show.

‘We are glad that the project Digital Physical Education received a well-deserved award from IPRA and we are proud to be involved in promoting sports among the younger generation. I think that many important topics are easier to promote with the help of humour and famous media people. That is why it is great that these components in the project were among the key ones, and that sport became of a format that children needed: exciting, fun, with jokes and in the form of games, and most importantly – useful,’ said Ivan Bukreyev, the director of NLO TV channel.

Hundreds of companies and advertising agencies from several dozen countries worldwide competed for the IPRA Golden World Awards. The Foundation and DTEK Company are the only representatives of Ukraine that received the award together with companies from Qatar, Japan, the Philippines and Greece.

.The audience of the project on the Foundation’s digital platforms and national television channels was over 5 million people. And the total audience, taking into account users of Diya digital platform and the airtime of 20 national TV channels, amounted to at least 26 million people.

All episodes of the series Digital Physical Education are posted on the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation’s page in Facebook and on its YouTube channel.