In early November, we held a series of final meetings of the Resilience, Recovery, and Development of Territorial Communities call for proposals grantees, during which participants presented the results of their projects.
The call for proposals, which the Foundation held in partnership with the support of the European Union, aimed to support initiatives for the transparent recovery and development of communities — those affected by the war and those that have received many internally displaced persons. The participating organizations initiated community engagement in reviewing and updating strategic documents, trained people in the communities to find funding for recovery, and attracted donors.
Simply put, they encouraged communities to update their strategies to consider all the opportunities and risks of today. Of course, we helped them with this both at the development stage and at the initial implementation stage.
As part of a series of meetings, our team, and the grantees also visited the Dmytrivska, Borodyanska, and Makarivska communities, where they got acquainted with the new community strategies developed within the call’s for proposals framework with the help of the Foundation’s grantees.
We took this opportunity to ask the representatives of the organizations what advice they could give to CSOs who are starting to work on community development. After all, Ukraine’s recovery is impossible without the comprehensive recovery of individual communities. CSOs can mediate a dialogue between different groups in the community and local authorities. They can also involve the community in recovery planning, as they have experience in project management and fundraising that they can share. Our grantees told us what will help launch these processes.
Olena Kravchenko, Ecology-Law-Human International Charitable Organization
The first piece of advice is to work systematically, listen to other NGOs, and assess the community’s needs. It is also necessary to work synergistically and understand the importance of modern challenges and tasks, both tactical and strategic. Develop your community from a strategic perspective through the European Green Deal and European integration. It is not the central government that needs this, but you to improve the standard of living in the community.
Sofia Molochiy, New Energy
First, you need to show quick results, and you can help the community even outside the project. This way, you can gain their trust. For example, we started by supporting the community in finding hygiene products for adults and mobility aids for people with limited mobility. That’s how we established friendly relations with the community. I also advise you to be patient and understand that the community needs time to start trusting you. If you are entering a community for the first time, be prepared not to be engaged in a project in the first months but in establishing connections.
Roman Kolesnyk, Institute for the Development of Social Innovation
First, you need to understand the community’s needs, and if your organization is based in another region, you should pay special attention to this. Nowadays, organizations from different regions can often find themselves in the same place, which also has advantages. This is an opportunity to share experiences. In general, you need to think about what you can bring to the community. For example, local CSOs often conflict with local authorities, but an organization from another region can help establish this dialogue. Please adequately assess your strengths because we frequently want to do a lot in a short period. This leads to burnout and a lack of budget. Network as much as possible because the main strength of the public sector is that there are many of us. Remember that you are not alone, involve colleagues from different fields to work on projects together.
