For us, cooperation with local communities has always gone beyond energy projects. In Burshtyn, a town in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region, our cooperation is already expanding into environmental education and youth-focused initiatives.
On 28 September, Burshtyn hosted the Burshtyn Energy 2.0 Forum, which brought together representatives of local government, business and the energy sector to discuss the town’s energy transition and future development. SPP Development Ukraine joined the discussion on how this transition can create new opportunities for local communities.
Iryna Korolchuk, Community Relations Specialist, and Serhii Stefurak, Project Manager, represented the company. Following the forum, SPP Development Ukraine and the Burshtyn City Council outlined practical areas for cooperation during the 2026–2027 academic year and signed a Protocol of Intent to move them forward.
The cooperation will focus on practical, everyday solutions: building environmentally responsible habits in schools, improving waste management, and supporting ideas developed by students themselves.
One area we feel particularly strongly about is school-based social entrepreneurship. It is about the moment when a student’s idea becomes more than just an idea: they learn to identify a problem, develop their own solution, test how it works, and ultimately turn it into something real with their own hands.
The first step is already underway. With support from SPP Development Ukraine, two recycling bins for plastic and bottle caps have been installed at Burshtyn Lyceum No. 3. The collected bottle caps will be donated to charitable recycling initiatives, with the proceeds helping to support prosthetic care for Ukrainian service members.
As the partnership develops, SPP Development Ukraine will provide the community with an extruder that can turn collected plastic into filament for 3D printing. This will connect waste sorting with a practical learning process, allowing students to transform recycled plastic into their own 3D-printed products.
