On 18 November 2025, the Rivne community hosted a Stakeholder Forum as part of the preparations for the upcoming citizens’ assembly on the theme “How can we make our community a place where young people want to stay and build their future?”, scheduled for spring 2026.
The Forum aimed to gather views and ideas on the factors influencing young people’s decisions to stay in or leave the community, as well as to determine what key information should be provided to the future assembly participants to enable them to develop well-founded recommendations for the local authorities.
The event was opened by Viktor Shakyrzian, Secretary of the City Council and Acting Mayor, who underlined the crucial role of young people in the community’s post-war development. Participants also emphasised that youth outmigration had been an issue even before the full-scale war, but today it is felt particularly acutely and has become one of the strategic challenges for the Rivne community.
A total of 42 participants took part in the Forum, including representatives of the Youth Council at Rivne City Council, school students, representatives of municipal institutions from Rivne and Kvasyliv, members of the Plast youth organisation, civil society organisations, and educational institutions.
Discussions centred around three key questions:
- what challenges influence young people’s decisions to leave;
- how to make the community a place where young people want to stay;
- what is needed for young people to feel informed and engaged in community life.
Participants worked in a “world café” format, which enabled collective discussions in small groups and allowed each question to be examined from multiple perspectives.
The Council of Europe project “Strengthening multilevel governance and local democracy to support Ukraine’s recovery” provides comprehensive expert and methodological support for the organisation and implementation of citizens’ assemblies in the Rivne community, the Obolon District of Kyiv, and the Lviv Agglomeration in 2026. In October 2025, the respective Memorandums of Understanding were signed in Strasbourg.
Citizens’ assembly is an innovative deliberative democracy tool increasingly used across Europe and beyond. The first citizens’ assemblies in Ukraine were held in 2024 — in the Zviahel and Slavutych communities — with the support of the Council of Europe. This instrument enables randomly selected, representative groups of residents to study an issue of community importance, deliberate with expert input, and produce recommendations for the authorities.
The event was organised within the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” for 2023-2026 and the project “Strengthening multilevel governance and local democracy to support Ukraine’s recovery”, implemented by the Council of Europe Centre of Expertise for Multilevel Governance at the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.
