"I wanted Perechyn to become a town where young people can spend their evenings engaging in interesting activities," says Andrii.

 

Starting as a group of dedicated volunteers devoted to revitalization of their home town and improving community, his initiative eventually grew into a leader civil society organisation (CSO) in the region. Today, his organisation, Centre of Civic Initiatives, has a 20-year experience in reaching out to a younger generation, promoting democratic governance and citizen participation to solve local problems, supporting development of civil society organisations, and ensuring cooperation between different sectors of society.

 

The success story of Andrii's organisation was similar to 7 other organisations, supported by UNDP that launched a support programme for Ukraine's regional leader CSOs (hubs) to help them become embodiments of the principles that they advocate for and ultimately lead other organizations forwards.

 

In order to nurture regional CSO leaders, UNDP focused at enhancing their internal democratic governance mechanisms, strengthening financial sustainability, upgrading advocacy skills, and rooting the organizations deeper in their communities through membership and volunteering.

 

During 2 years of core support provided by UNDP, hubs significantly improved their governance procedures, openness, and accountability. All 8 hubs rebooted their Boards, restructured management systems within organizations, developed and applied new governance and financial policies. All 8 hubs prepared and published their annual reports with 2 hubs winning an award for their annual reports in the all-Ukrainian competition.

 

Moreover, hubs increased their financial sustainability using local fundraising and good planning. Annual budgets of 5 hubs increased approximately by 30%, 1 hub increased its budget by 3 times, 2 hubs increased their budgets by 16 times. Four hubs became more self-depended, managing to fundraise from sources other than international donor support (i.e. local business, local budgets, individual donations). Sources from local fundraising are equal to 6% of hubs' annual budgets.

 

Becoming more open and transparent in their communities, hubs managed to engage and retain more and more volunteers as well as recruit new members in each organisation.

 

As a result, hubs conducted 16 advocacy campaigns involving wide range of stakeholders and supported 88 local initiatives improving communities in Zakarpattia, Chernihiv, Kherson, Donetsk, Lviv, Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk, and Rivne regions of the country.

 

The regional hubs also played an active role in implementing the reform agenda in the regions. Three hubs were promoting decentralization policy among representatives of self-government bodies in Zakarpattia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kherson oblasts, fostering the amalgamation of communities. Two other hubs participated in designing and advocating for amendments to the Law on Local Elections in Ukraine to make local elections more transparent and to ensure the right to vote for internally displaced persons.

 

The initiative was held with the support of the Democratization, Human Rights and Civil Society Development Programme, implemented by UNDP Ukraine and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.