May 2008, Kyiv: The UNDP-led Municipal Governance and Community Empowerment Programme released a publication “How to Create an Active Community-Based Organisation” aimed to support Ukrainian municipalities in their efforts to actively involve the local communities into the decision-making process on local development and guide the citizens in solving their development problems on their own.
The experience around the world including Europe and Ukraine indicates that people may successfully resolve their own local problems in case they get organized and create the active community-based organisation. In today’s world, donor agencies, government sector, municipalities and non-government organisations recognize the fact that no single individual / agency will be able to tackle all the local problems. Therefore, they look for suitable partner(s) to join hands and solve local problems. It is well known that citizens are the best partners at local level. In case people come forward with willingness to help themselves, these agencies from public and private sectors also become interested to support them. Such support is available through forging partnership with them which is founded on mutual trust and capacity of the people to help themselves in solving common local problems – may it be of social, economic or environmental nature.
In this context, the UNDP-led Municipal Governance and Community Empowerment Programme (MGCEP) of UNDP/Ukraine is functioning in Ukrainian cities since 2004. This Programme works in partnership with the city councils and supports in building capacity of the citizens to help themselves. During the period of Programme activities, wide experience was gained in helping people to create an active community-based organization and legally register it in a best suitable legal form to ensure its sustainability and future efficiency in providing services to its members. Due to this support, since the period of Programme inception in 2004, 285 organisations of citizens were created in the cities (associations of co-owners of multi-apartment buildings, service cooperatives, bodies of self-organisation of population etc) with over 32 thousand members (58% women, 42% men). These organizations managed to implement 141 community infrastructure projects worth 3.360 thousand USD. The project cost was shared by the communities themselves (12% of the total cost), partner municipalities (51%), UNDP/MGCEP fund (33%) and other local private/public donors (4%). Therefore, the total local contribution to the project cost constituted 67%.
Lessons learned by the partner communities and the municipal units for supporting the community initiatives created in each partner municipality for implementing the Programme activities at local level, were summarized and incorporated into the Programme’s process guidelines developed for the citizens of Ukraine willing to actively participate in local decision-making and improve their living quality by themselves. These guidelines and lessons learned became part of the manual “How to Create an Active Community-Based Organisation” which is now available for the benefit of all citizens of Ukrainian cities and others related with local development.
“Real self-organisation of population is very important for effective community-based local development in general, and for solving the existing problems of the housing and communal sector in particular. In the activities of our department, we widely use the guidelines offered by the experts of the UNDP/MGCEP which have recently became the part of the manual on creating the active community-based organization. This advice has proved effective in motivating people to get organized, joining their forces with the local government and participatory solving their priority development problems”, says Iryna Gudz, Head of the Department of Supporting the Community Initiatives and Investments of Novohrad-Volynskiy City Council.
The electronic version of the manual may be downloaded from the section of Publications of the Programme’s web-site http://msdp.undp.org.ua.
For further details, please contact Mrs. Olena URSU, UNDP/MGCEP Monitoring and Communication Expert, by tel. (067) 290 36 42 or via e-mail: olena.ursu@undp.org.ua.
In this context, the UNDP-led Municipal Governance and Community Empowerment Programme (MGCEP) of UNDP/Ukraine is functioning in Ukrainian cities since 2004. This Programme works in partnership with the city councils and supports in building capacity of the citizens to help themselves. During the period of Programme activities, wide experience was gained in helping people to create an active community-based organization and legally register it in a best suitable legal form to ensure its sustainability and future efficiency in providing services to its members. Due to this support, since the period of Programme inception in 2004, 285 organisations of citizens were created in the cities (associations of co-owners of multi-apartment buildings, service cooperatives, bodies of self-organisation of population etc) with over 32 thousand members (58% women, 42% men). These organizations managed to implement 141 community infrastructure projects worth 3.360 thousand USD. The project cost was shared by the communities themselves (12% of the total cost), partner municipalities (51%), UNDP/MGCEP fund (33%) and other local private/public donors (4%). Therefore, the total local contribution to the project cost constituted 67%.
Lessons learned by the partner communities and the municipal units for supporting the community initiatives created in each partner municipality for implementing the Programme activities at local level, were summarized and incorporated into the Programme’s process guidelines developed for the citizens of Ukraine willing to actively participate in local decision-making and improve their living quality by themselves. These guidelines and lessons learned became part of the manual “How to Create an Active Community-Based Organisation” which is now available for the benefit of all citizens of Ukrainian cities and others related with local development.
“Real self-organisation of population is very important for effective community-based local development in general, and for solving the existing problems of the housing and communal sector in particular. In the activities of our department, we widely use the guidelines offered by the experts of the UNDP/MGCEP which have recently became the part of the manual on creating the active community-based organization. This advice has proved effective in motivating people to get organized, joining their forces with the local government and participatory solving their priority development problems”, says Iryna Gudz, Head of the Department of Supporting the Community Initiatives and Investments of Novohrad-Volynskiy City Council.
The electronic version of the manual may be downloaded from the section of Publications of the Programme’s web-site http://msdp.undp.org.ua.
For further details, please contact Mrs. Olena URSU, UNDP/MGCEP Monitoring and Communication Expert, by tel. (067) 290 36 42 or via e-mail: olena.ursu@undp.org.ua.
