Representatives of all 60 municipalities of Poltava Oblast can receive individual consultations regarding project activities and attracting additional resources to their territory in the Regional Office of U-LEAD with Europe. This was reported by Iryna Balybina, head of the Regional Office.
Recently, representatives of the Obolon municipality came to the Regional Office for one of these consultations. Municipality leader Borys Pustovoytov noted that they had the opportunity to participate in an experience exchange visit organized by the U-LEAD Program and visited the Cherkasy region. This visit clearly demonstrated the benefits of training municipality in project management and the results of such training:
"We visited the Cherkasy and Shevchenkiv municipalities, talked with colleagues from Cherkasy, saw the work of the project department. And they understood that we should not stand still, we should work in the same way. Now we have a project manager, we are working on some grants that we want to bring to our municipality."
The Obolon municipality plans to attract international support to improve the work of the Territorial Center for the Provision of Social Services, which provides services to the population affected by the full-scale invasion, families who find themselves in difficult life circumstances, people with disabilities and the elderly. Oleg Lysenko, the project manager of the Obolon municipality, informed that the municipality, within the framework of the "Able and Strong" program, has already taken part in the grant competition held by the "Eastern Europe" fund with funding from the Swiss government.
Experts of the U-LEAD with Europe Program help specialists from the Obolon municipality to build the logic of the project, plan communication resources and receive a grant, noted Iryna Balybina:
"Attracting additional resources on a project basis becomes important in the conditions of military aggression against Ukraine and limited budget funding, as well as taking into account the post-war prospects of reconstruction. That is why such support from U-LEAD takes place on an ongoing basis," she said.
Also, according to the head of the office, the U-LEAD Programme continues to organize "Steps for specialists. Project cycle management", which are dedicated to the topic of project cycle management and involve leading experts in this field in working with municipalities.
"This program is implemented during September-November 2023. Its purpose is to help LGUs to master project management skills in order to use them in the future to attract additional resources for the development of territories. Participation in the educational program was competitive, only two teams from Poltava Oblast participated in this project. This is the team of the Karliv city council and the team of the Nekhvoroshcha village council," - notes Iryna Balybina.
According to her, one of the participants of the Steps - Nekhvoroshcha municipality, already has considerable experience in attracting additional funds for the development of its territories, creating conditions for IDPs, etc., from state and international support programs. This time the municipality is training a new team because it is working on the creation of a separate institution that will deal exclusively with project activities to attract additional funds to the municipality.
If you are interested in this topic, we also suggest watching the plot of the Poltava TV channel "IRT".