On September 29, the Dobrobut multidisciplinary hospital on Bazhana Avenue in Kyiv hosted a ceremony to award scholarships to Dobrobut Academy interns.

14 young Dobrobut doctors received personalized scholarships of $1,000 each, which will partially cover the annual tuition fee. 10 scholarships were provided by the Ukrainian-American organization Shevchenko Scientific Society in the United States (NSS, New York, USA), and four more were provided by Dobrobut Foundation. To support the Ukrainian interns, members of the NSS donated their own funds.

Scholarships were awarded to those interns whose lives were most affected by the full-scale war. All of them took their exams under Russian rocket fire, most were forced to leave their homes and cities to escape the occupation, several of them have parents serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and some have lost contact with loved ones in the temporarily occupied territories. Despite all these terrible prerequisites, the young professionals overcame a difficult multi-stage selection process for the Dobrobut Academy internship and worthily withstood the competition of 8 people per place.

The ceremony was attended by Nana Voitenko, rector of the Dobrobut Academy, Vadym Shekman, CEO of the Dobrobut Medical Network, and Mladena Kachurets, director of the Dobrobut Training and Development Department. The ceremony was also attended by online representatives of the Shevchenko Scientific Society: Halyna Hryn, President of the Scientific Society and a fellow at the Institute of Ukrainian Studies at Harvard; Roman Shyrokov, Professor at Rutgers University and Vice President of the Scientific Society for Life Sciences; and Adriana Helbig, Chair of the Scientific Society's Grant Committee.

The ceremony began with a minute of silence in memory of those who died in the war, including Vitaliy Synenko, a pediatrician and embryologist at Dobrobut, to whom the scholarships from the Dobrobut Foundation were dedicated.

The rector of the Dobrobut Academy, Nana Voitenko, congratulated the scholarship holders on their first professional achievements and wished them to remain steadfast on the way to their goals.

"Doctors always play an important role during wars and have their own special vocation. Now and after the war, many people will need your help. You have accepted the challenges of today and are entering your profession at a very dramatic time. But you have the opportunity to shape the new Ukrainian medicine and participate in the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. And we are very pleased to support you," Galyna Hryn, head of the National Academy of Sciences, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, addressed the young doctors.

Prof. Shyrokov reminded that the words "scientist" and "student" have a common root, which means that we all have to learn all our lives, and senior colleagues will always help younger ones. And these scholarships are personal assistance of the members of the National Academy of Sciences to their younger colleagues for the development of modern medicine in independent Ukraine.

"We believe in victory, in the free future of Ukraine. And the future is impossible without quality medicine and good doctors. And I am convinced that you will become such doctors - not only the Dobrobut Academy, but the whole country will be proud of them. And these scholarships are a part of our contribution to our common future," said Vadym Shekman, CEO of Dobrobut.