Ukraine, Sustainable Development through improved Local Governance

Objective

The main objective of the project is to enhance the sustainability and resilience of local government following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, through participatory processes, risk mitigation, and economic development of 15 selected communities.

The project consists of two phases:

Phase 1: October 2022 – March 2024. Four municipalities from the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions participated, with the main focus on (early) recovery processes.

Phase 2: April 2024 – December 2025. Fifteen municipalities participated from the eastern and southern regions, with the main focus on the sustainability and resilience.

During both phases we ensure the increase of capacity and knowledge of local authorities through training, consultation and exchange visits. Participatory processes and citizen engagement mechanisms (including war veterans, IDPs, women, youth) play crucial roles in the project implementation.

Approach

Phase 1: Main activities are:

• To support communities in designing their own local recovery and development plans;
• To implement one of the projects contained in those plans;
• To increase the authorities’ capacity for fundraising and project management.

Phase 2: Main activities are:

• To enhance sustainability and resilience of selected municipalitiesby focusing on three themes: “safety, security, resilience”, “local economic development and project management”, “democratisation and decentralisation;
• To design and/or update respective policies, programmes and strategies;
• To increase project management skills of local authorities through the development and implementation of one project per community, in close collaboration (where applicable) with local NGO’s and local businesses.

During both phases, we ensure close collaboration with Dutch municipalities and other Dutch institutions for sharing knowledge and expertise.

Results

During phase 1, the following results were achieved:

• 4 local recovery and development plans; 1 recovery grant for each community;
• Over 30 projects under implementation for each community, with the involvement of different finance sources (local budgets, Ukrainian state budget, international donor funding);
• Guidelines for local recovery plans created and shared with other communities and the Ministry for Restoration;
• Close cooperation established with different spin-off initiatives (Utrecht safety region, Technical University Delft, Ukrainian-Netherlands Urban Network (UNUN);
• Firefighters without Borders, Urban Heritage Strategies at Erasmus University of Rotterdam).
• Close collaboration established between multiple Dutch and Ukrainian municipalities.
• Increased capacity of the civil servants in the municipalities.