On April 5, 2006 the second meeting of the Decentralized Management of Skills Training in Ukraine Project (DMSTP) Joint Project Steering Committee took place at the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy of Ukraine conference hall.

During the meeting, an official Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Association of Canadian Community Colleges and Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology and the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine. The Joint Project Steering Committee meeting was attended by representatives of Canadian and Ukrainian project partners as well as the Canadian Embassy and Canadian International Development Agency.

The Joint Project Steering Committee also approved the project workplan for April 1, 2006 - March 31, 2007. During this period, the project will concentrate on the following key areas that were identified through strategies developed by regional and national project stakeholders:

• Quality Assurance of Retraining Programs. The central focus of the project in 2006/7 will be to establish an informal and voluntary project quality assurance system that will serve as a quality control tool within the retraining system as a whole. 
• Regional Management Development. The project will provide training to management stakeholders at all levels of the retraining system with the emphasis at the regional and local levels. Stakeholders include managers at regional employment centres, regional education departments and managers of retraining organizations.  Best practices within the retraining systems will be examined for replication and the adaptation of international practices (Canada and Europe) and will be piloted within the Ukrainian context.
• Stakeholders Networking. This component of the project will focus on establishing and maintaining networks with stakeholders at all level, from the national level, to the regional level to the school level, right down to the level of individual programs.
• Labour Market Assessment/Program Assessment. Ensuring the applicability of retraining programs to the local and regional labour market will be a key focus. This will involve piloting improvements in validating occupational needs, localizing retraining programs specific to local and regional employer needs, and improving the quality of delivery of training to standards identified by local industry and employers.
• Study Tours. First hand observation of new and innovative concepts and methods of operation is often critical to a full grasp of these. Key participants in the adaptation of new practices in the retraining system in Ukraine will benefit from observation of retraining systems that model the concepts being implemented as part of the DMSTP. To facilitate this, there will be two study tours to Canada and one to Slovakia.