Representatives of the Vinnytsia City Territorial Community took part in training on community capacity building
On March 21-22, representatives of the Departments of the Vinnytsia City Council: Economy and Investments, Restoration and Development, and the Communal Enterprise “Vinnytsia Fund of Municipal Investments” took part in a training on strengthening the capacity of communities in matters of restoration and development of economic potential. In addition to the delegation from Vinnytsia, the training was attended by representatives of 12 municipalities of Ukraine, which implement local initiatives within the framework of the project “Supporting the Rapid Economic Recovery of Ukrainian Municipalities (SRER)”.
The SRER project is financed by the German Government through the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and is implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine. It focuses on supporting the rapid recovery of the community economy, in particular, through the reconstruction and improvement of infrastructure, which is important for the development of businesses, primarily small and medium-sized ones.
The purpose of the training is to strengthen the capacity of local officials and representatives of utility enterprises in forming partnerships between local self-government bodies, the business community and the public sector, as well as executive authorities. Such a partnership will become a powerful basis for building a favorable business environment and joint project activities.
The training was the first of six events planned as part of a comprehensive training program developed by the Association of Cities of Ukraine within SRER. The successful completion of this program will contribute to strengthening the capacity of the Vinnytsia urban territorial community and developing the potential of the local team to implement economic recovery projects in partnership with business and other stakeholders.
Mustafa Sait-Ametov, head of the UNDP Regional Development Program in Ukraine: “This training program brings threefold benefit to the participants. First, all 12 communities that joined the project generated their initiatives and are now actively implementing them. Their participation in the training program will contribute to the successful completion of these initiatives, and therefore to the restoration and further development of communities. Secondly, it is the experience that municipalities acquire in the process of project implementation.Working with UNDP, they gain important knowledge and skills that will allow them to initiate and implement projects of similar scale and complexity in the future. And thirdly, by helping municipalities, the Association of Cities of Ukraine also gains experience. She accumulates this experience and will have the opportunity to scale it up and spread it to help other members of the Association.”
Oleksandr Slobozhan, executive director of the Association of Cities of Ukraine, noted the importance of implementing the project not only for each of the 12 municipalities that had the opportunity to implement their own initiatives, but also for the economic strengthening of Ukrainian communities for the recovery of all of Ukraine. Oleksandr Slobozhan briefly announced the component of the Training Program developed by AMU within the framework of SRER, aimed at strengthening the capacity of communities.
During his speech, the Executive Director of AMU emphasized the value of implementing local initiatives, because thanks to their successful implementation, we will receive a formed algorithm of actions for the implementation of similar projects. AMU will replicate these best practices among other municipalities of Ukraine.
Kateryna Babina, director of the Vinnytsia Municipal Investment Fund utility company, noted that cooperation within the framework of the project “Support for the rapid economic recovery of Ukrainian municipalities (SRER)” allows to receive much-needed support in the implementation of socially important projects in today’s conditions. Such as, for example, the project implemented in Vinnytsia, namely “Krystal Innovation and Technology Park – a space for the creation and implementation of new business projects and the implementation of innovations for the reconstruction of Ukraine.”Thanks to the creation of such spaces, we will significantly revive the development of entrepreneurship, increase the level of innovation implementation and create a new space for the realization of the skills of talented youth and students.
We would like to remind you that the Association of Cities of Ukraine is one of the partners of the SRER project, which contributes to strengthening the capacity of municipalities and local project teams in Ukraine. In addition to the training program mentioned above, AMU provides advisory and technical support to municipalities and project partners at all stages of implementation of initiatives (implementation, monitoring and reporting), and after the successful implementation of the projects will spread these best practices among all member communities of the Association.
This material was created by the Vinnytsia City Council within the framework of the project “Supporting the rapid economic recovery of Ukrainian municipalities” (SRER), which is implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine with the support of the international cooperation project ReACT4UA (“Application and implementation of the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine in trade”), which is financed by the German government and implemented by the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
Photo: Dmitry Korchak / UNDP