National Pedagogical Skovoroda University Kharkiv
Faculty of Biology, Department of Botany
Project leader Dimitrij Leporskij visited six new interested departments in Kharkiv, Melitopol, Simferopol, Ternopil and Odessa at the beginning of 2012 to demonstrate human education tools. All of the university lecturers visited were prepared to refrain from animal use and killing in education in future and to switch to animal-free teaching methods.
The agreements were signed in April 2012. With these, the university teachers undertake to refrain from any animal use and killing in the respective course from the start of the new semester on 1 September 2012.
Dr Timur Grinchenko (left), Head of the Department of Botany of the Faculty of Biology at the National Pedagogical Skovoroda University in Kharkiv, and his colleague Dr Alexander Pinsky with the two brand new computers and monitors that we donated to them.
Every year, 260 invertebrates such as grasshoppers, octopuses and earthworms as well as 220 frogs, carps and rats were dissected by students at this department. This is now a thing of the past.
Control visit
The control visit took place on 29 January 2012 and everything is proceeding to our complete satisfaction. The donated materials are in use, the animal experiments have been discontinued and the university teachers are very satisfied with the new, humane curriculum. The department was the second and last at this university to switch to animal-free education. The university is now animal-free, at least in the field of education!