Eugenia Mazurenko, CEO of the Zagoriy Foundation, a family foundation in Kyiv, Ukraine, comes to WE this October as a participant in the month-long Professional Fellows Program (PFP), sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and locally by the San Diego Diplomacy Council. Before the full-scale war in Ukraine, Eugenia lived in Bucha. Having now relocated to western Ukraine with her husband and daughter, she continues her important and impressive work at the foundation and leads a women’s support group for her former neighbors from Bucha. While here in San Diego, she will work on projects for WE in line with her expertise in philanthropy, grantmaking, and nonprofit management/capacity-building and her personal interests in women’s empowerment efforts. She also applied to PFP with a personal goal to raise awareness about the NGO sector in Ukraine and to connect international organizations with Ukrainian grassroots organizations.
Eugenia has more than 13 years of experience in the management of charitable foundations and non-governmental organizations. She is also host of the Podcast “Great Stories,” a columnist about charity on platfor.ma, liga.net, and nv.business, and an Executive MBA student at the Kyiv-Mohyla Business School. Prior to her work with the Zagoriy Foundation, she worked at NGO Forum, Danish Refugee Council, and Klitschko Foundation.
Eugenia, welcome and thank you for your service with WE!
About the Zagoriy Foundation:
Zagoriy Foundation is a private family foundation established in 2015. The foundation’s mission is to develop the culture of giving in Ukraine. They achieve this through grantmaking activities, conducting research, capacity-building for organizations, promoting institutional philanthropy, and developing the philanthropic community. Currently, their primary focus is on supporting grassroots community service organizations (CSOs) in Ukraine that help beneficiaries in times of war. This year, they’ve been validated by Charities Aid Foundation, and thanks to their network of partners in Ukraine and abroad have been able to scale activities to support nonprofits in Ukraine more effectively. Zagoriy Foundation is a member of WINGS, National Center for Family Philanthropy, Philea, and EVPA.
Currently, Eugenia and the team at the foundation are working on a big project to create a mapping platform of previously verified organizations and foundations. This initiative aims to raise awareness of the sector and build trust in the NGO sector in Ukraine.
The foundation also conducts research projects, the latest report being on Charity in times of war. The study notes the growth in the scale of charity and its rapid development in Ukraine over the past year, the significant increase in involvement of Ukrainians in charity, and the increase of trust in charitable institutions.