Kyiv, 13 March 2026 – The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine have completed an internship programme for young women professionals.

Over the four months of the programme, 14 final-year students and recent university graduates gained the opportunity to participate in the implementation of real digital projects at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the Diia state enterprise, and the Innovation Development Fund.

In addition to practical tasks, the participants also attended weekly webinars given by leading digitalisation experts, as well as three training sessions to develop their soft skills – leadership, intercultural cooperation, and public speaking.

The programme’s goal was to provide an opportunity to young women professionals to join the processes of state digitalisation and to inspire young female professionals to work in the IT, state digitalisation and defence technologies sectors, where men currently predominate. For many of the participants, the programme was an additional inspiration to continue their career path in the civil service and create new electronic services for Ukrainian citizens.

“The programme revealed to me how the state works, how policies and bills are created, and that the state machine is not as scary as it is usually described,” said Alina Dotsenko, one of the interns at the Ministry of Digital Transformation. “Thanks to the internship, I managed to gain unique knowledge that I would not have been able to get anywhere else.”

Vlada Hlushchenko, an intern at the State Enterprise Diia, noted: “From the first day of the internship, it was all practice. Because of this, I gained a lot of technical skills, as well as soft skills – thanks to weekly webinars. The programme gave me an opportunity to see the transformation of the country and take part in it, as well as see firsthand the benefits of digital transformation.” 

Iryna Bosa, who also interned at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, said one of the most important skills that she gained through the internship was multitasking. “We were able to work on all stages of the process of developing new services, or assessing existing ones – from analysing regulatory acts, to visualizing and creating mockups, business processes, analytics, and communications.” 

Yelyzaveta Sokolova, who interned at the Innovation Development Fund, said: “The internship allowed me to expand the range of responsibilities and try myself in a new field. Thanks to the programme, I gained time management skills, and learned about prioritizing tasks, as well as attracting and supporting partnerships.”

Angelina Guk, who interned at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, noted: “In fact, the Ministry of Digital Transformation has a super-dynamic, active team that lives these changes and really strives to digitise the public sector and make it more human-centric.” 

Iryna Kharchenko, an intern at the Innovation Development Fund, was surprised by the number of young people working in the field. “These are super cool, progressive specialists who work for the good of their state,” she said. “They move the country forward and do everything to make ministries and central government bodies less bureaucratised. These are the people you really want to learn from.” 

And Anna Shekhovtsova, an intern at the Ministry of Digital Transformation, said: “The internship allowed me to gain many skills that I will use both at work and in real life, in particular planning and time management. I’m looking forward to the launch of the service that I was lucky enough to work on. It is an incredible feeling to know that you were involved in the development of a service that will soon be working for citizens.” 

The internship programme was implemented by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine as part of the DIA Support Project, which the UNDP in Ukraine is implementing with financial support from Sweden.

This is the second set of the internship programme for young women. Earlier in 2022, seven graduates and young technical specialists completed an internship programme at the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Every year since 2023, UNDP in Ukraine, funded by Sweden, and in partnership with the ministry’s CDTO Campus educational initiative, has also been implementing the Leadership Programme for Women in Public Sector Digitalisation.

Media inquiries:

Yuliia Samus, Head of Communications and Advocacy, UNDP in Ukraine: yuliia.samus@undp.org