New Cooperation Agreement Strengthens Holodomor Education in Ukraine
HREC Education Expands an Established Partnership
A new 2026 Memorandum of Cooperation brings together the Ukrainian Institute of Education Development (UIED), a state-run organization under Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science, established in 2019 to reform and modernize the country’s school system), HREC Education, a project of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (University of Alberta), and HREC in Ukraine in a significant new partnership to advance Holodomor education in Ukraine and beyond.
The agreement recognizes the study of the Holodomor of 1932–1933 as the genocide of the Ukrainian people as essential not only to historical understanding and the restoration of historical justice, but also to understanding how totalitarian regimes operate, strengthening young people’s resilience to manipulation and propaganda, and promoting human rights and the prevention of future crimes against humanity.
At the heart of the partnership is a shared commitment to improving the quality of history education and strengthening the professional capacity of educators through rigorous, scholarly, multiperspective, and innovative approaches to teaching sensitive and controversial historical topics. The partners will work together to deepen the study of the Holodomor within the broader contexts of Ukrainian and world history and to translate current scholarship into meaningful educational practice.
Building on HREC Director Valentina Kuryliw’s Longstanding Work
The new agreement builds on more than three decades of work by Valentina Kuryliw to advance Holodomor education in Canada and Ukraine, including her longstanding leadership in curriculum development, teacher education, and the development of pedagogical approaches and resources for teaching the Holodomor. As the founding Director of Education of HREC and a leading figure in Holodomor education, Kuryliw has helped establish and strengthen the connections between scholarship, curriculum, teacher preparation, and classroom practice that underpin this new collaboration.
The Memorandum provides an expanded framework through which this established work can continue in cooperation with Ukraine’s educational institutions, while bringing together Ukrainian and international expertise around the development of effective, research-informed approaches to Holodomor education.
From Scholarship to Educational Practice
The Memorandum establishes a broad program of cooperation. This includes the joint development and piloting of curricula, textbooks, teaching resources, and online courses, drawing on the latest archival research and the pedagogical standards of Ukraine’s New Ukrainian School (NUS). The partners will also organize scholarly-practical conferences, seminars, round tables, and professional learning opportunities, including summer and winter schools for educators.
A further area of collaboration is expert and methodological support. The partners will provide professional review of educational projects and materials addressing the Holodomor and other genocides, while conducting research and surveys to better understand how complex historical topics are taught and to identify educators’ methodological needs. Joint projects and competitions will also form part of the collaboration, including the International Interdisciplinary Competition of Academic and Artistic Works named after Volodymyr Maniak and Lidiia Kovalenko.
Connecting Ukraine and the International Education Community
The partnership also has an important international dimension. Through HREC’s network of partners in Canada and other countries, the Memorandum creates opportunities to bring Ukrainian scholarly and pedagogical experience into international educational dialogue, while connecting educators and researchers across borders around effective approaches to teaching the Holodomor and other difficult histories.
For HREC Education, the agreement represents an important opportunity to further its long-standing work at the intersection of scholarship, curriculum development, teacher education, and classroom practice. For Ukraine, it creates a framework for bringing together state educational institutions, Ukrainian and international expertise, research, and pedagogy around a shared educational purpose.
More than a formal agreement, the Memorandum establishes a long-term framework for collaboration and innovation in Holodomor education—one that can help strengthen the quality, reach, and international exchange of Holodomor education, and contribute to ensuring that the history of the Holodomor is taught with scholarly rigour, historical depth, and relevance to the challenges facing today’s students in Ukraine.
