Lyubov Palyvoda from CCC, who stands behind this exercise, said that the main goal of this working group is to help elaborate the fundamental terms like "civil society" and "civil society organizations" for the future National Strategy.

The experts agreed to define civil society as a sphere outside the family, the state, and business, where people come together for advancement of common interests. The next step for the meeting participants will be providing further clarifying explanations and validation of this definition.

The discussion revolved around denoting the term "third sector," argued in favour of using the term "organization" versus "institutions," and urged to reflect the situation in Ukraine while setting the developmental direction in civil society definition.

Later, the working group came up with the definition of a civil society organization (CSO) that should be legalized (although informal active groups may also be considered), non-governmental, non-profit, self-guided, voluntary, and operates in the interest of its members and constituents or the public.

For the inventory of Ukrainian CSOs, experts believe it is important to consider not only organizations with a positive intent, but also a negative one (football fans and skinheads, veiled communist organizations, etc.). This is needed to determine not only the degree of support for democracy and tolerance by CSOs, but also the level of intolerance and cruelty.

The next point on the meeting' agenda unpacked the issue of defining CSO functions. Experts agreed that the main "visible" CSO functions are provision of services and community representation and/or community-based monitoring and control. "Invisible" (or moral) CSO functions include protecting values and building social capital (trust, mutual support) between members of a community or society.

Finally, experts reviewed types of CSOs and agreed to make a list of all legal forms that can be used to register CSOs in Ukraine and, based on the existing legal situation, make a list of different types of civil society organizations.

Oleksandr Yarema, Head of the Presidential Administration Department on Cooperation with Civil Society, confirmed with the working group that its suggestions will feed the revised National Strategy for Support of Civil Society.