Since April 2023, more than 20 Ukrainian municipalities have hosted such dialogue meetings. With the help of modern methods of communication, they discussed important issues of municipal life and possible ways to solve them. Facilitators from local self-government bodies, who had previously been trained in dialogue facilitation, helped moderate the events. The participants were able to share opinions and offer their ideas and visions for solving local problems.
The participants of the event in the Privilne municipality of the Rivne oblast emphasised the practical benefit of dialogue meetings.
At the meeting, they discussed possible areas of development and improvement of education in schools to increase the competitiveness of schoolchildren when entering higher education institutions.
During the dialogue, representatives of local authorities, educators and parents of rural school students discussed the possibilities of introducing the STEM education system and its advantages, emphasising that this system was viewed favourably by students and had a positive effect on the quality of their learning.
Having helped introduce the STEM education system in the Privilne Lyceum, Svitlana Roik, Chief Expert on International Development, Investment Attraction and Project Management of the Privilne municipality, offered her assistance to educators in writing projects for grant competitions in order to attract resources to introduce this system in their schools. Following the meeting, the participants agreed to create a joint working group to determine the directions of work and gather at the next dialogue meeting to work out and develop a common vision of possible future projects.
“We must do our best to ensure that education in rural schools is at the same level as in larger cities. Children studying in the villages should be competitive when enrolling into higher education institutions,” said Svitlana Roik.
At the dialogue event in the Znamianka municipality in the Odesa oblast, the participants discussed the problem of land improvement and waste disposal. Working in groups, they brainstormed ideas to solve three main problems: sorting and recycling garbage and finding investors for the construction of a garbage processing facility in the municipality.
This allowed the participants of the dialogue to create a specific action plan indicating the types of activities, deadlines and responsible parties. They will start the planned activities with a public survey in the municipality in the form of a questionnaire, which will include questions on garbage removal and sorting and its further processing.
At the meeting in the Berezhany municipality of the Ternopil region, municipal youth together with representatives of authorities and activists discussed challenges in the field of youth policy in the municipality and expressed their personal visions of overcoming them. The first outcome of the dialogue was the decision to create a youth council in the municipality. During the event, the participants came up with a list of participants of the initiative group for the creation of this consultative and advisory body. There will be further meetings on this issue.
In addition, the Zabolottsi municipality in the Lviv oblast started the dialogue on the creation of an inter-school student parliament to actively engage young people in municipal life. A dialogue meeting in the Reni municipality of the Odesa oblast focused on effective response to a large number of stray animals, their neutering and the creation of shelters. And the residents of the Kilia municipality, together with representatives of the local self-government, talked about creating their own municipal brand, which would reflect the history and local features.
This is but a small glimpse into the topical issues discussed by a number of municipalities. Among the other issues on the agenda are land improvement, mental health of residents in wartime, forms and methods of support and integration of internally displaced persons and socially vulnerable groups of the people, youth engagement in public life, development of culture and tourism, preservation of cultural heritage, ensuring the provision of medical services of proper quality, household waste management, etc.
A total of 240 discussions in municipalities from 12 oblasts of Ukraine are to be held as part of the Creative Dialogue Labs Project, aimed at strengthening the dialogue approach as an important tool for implementing local self-government in Ukrainian municipalities and public engagement in the decision-making process.