During April-May 2015 within educational visits called «Rural communities development models» rural communities of Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad and Lviv regions became acquainted with the experience of urban-type community Borodianka and village Novyi Korohod which are the part of Borodianka area of the Kyiv region. These educational visits were organized by the GURT Resource Centre within the project «Promote the development of social infrastructure» that is implemented by Ukrainian Social Investment Fund and directed into the rural communities development.

«During educational visits you will see our communities’ results that are gained due to the three years cooperation with the GURT Resource Centre. You will visit the communities that had to move due to Chernobyl disaster and had to start from scratch. It was difficult at the beginning to accumulate people but these efforts worth the results. Implementing the project we successfully united local leaders, authorities, entrepreneurs and the citizens» – noted the head of Borodianskiy centre «Doviria» Ludmyla Boiko.

After participants got acquainted with each other they went to Borodianka village council where they learnt more about the experience of creation and implementation of community development plans with the assistance of representatives of civil organizations, local initiative groups and influential citizens. Besides the participants could communicate with the members of Borodianka «Community development fund» and could hear about the successfully fulfilled  projects of social, economic and cultural needs of the citizens satisfaction and also about the technology of social changes – the self-help groups.

Then the participants went to the village Novyi Korohod. There they had a talk with the village council of Novyi Korohod Olha Myhaliova who showed them the tools to create and coordinate community development working groups and to attract the community members to implement socially useful initiatives. As an example Olha Muhailivna showed to the participants modernized school and the museum of regional ethnology within it and children’s playground that was built within the project «Equal Opportunities for National Minorities and Disadvantaged Groups in Realizing Cultural Rights: Richness in Diversity».

On the second day the participants took part in the trainings «How to stimulate the development of my community?». Within these trainings the participants determined in the world café format how the institutions of local governing can improve their interaction with the community and worked out plans of individual actions.

Educational visits became the platform of communication as village councils, schools directors, members of regional national administrations of Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia and Lviv regions had an opportunity to communicate in the informal atmosphere and to create a ground to the future cooperation.

Author: Pavlo Shyba