On 4–5 April 2026, the Rivne community held the second session of its citizens’ assembly on the question: “How can we make our community a place where young people want to stay and build their future?”

The citizens’ assembly, organised by the Rivne City Council with comprehensive methodological and financial support from the Council of Europe project “Strengthening multilevel governance and local democracy to support Ukraine’s recovery”,  identified the key challenges facing young people in the community and developed initial ideas for how to address them.

During the first session, participants familiarised themselves with the topic and the current situation in the community. At the second session, they moved to deeper discussions and practical work. In particular, participants:

• received additional insights from independent experts and deepened their understanding of the issues;
• developed a shared vision for the future and defined key objectives;
• identified priority challenges as a basis for developing solutions;
• formulated initial ideas for solutions corresponding to these priorities;
• discussed and prioritised draft recommendations.

Throughout the process, participants were supported by experts from Lutsk, Lviv and Kyiv. As during the first weekend, the format of “speed dialogues” proved highly effective. Experts shared successful practices for engaging young people, including the role of universities as centres of youth engagement, the digitalisation of municipal services, the creation of youth hubs and social spaces, the development of cultural initiatives, as well as programmes supporting entrepreneurship, business incubators and career counselling.

“I am proud that our ideas have now become more concrete. We see that similar thoughts are emerging in other groups, so shared ideas are beginning to take shape. I will definitely return for the next session, as I have made a conscious decision to follow the whole process through to the end,” said one of the participants.

“I would like to thank everyone involved in this process for every idea shared. We also thank our facilitators. We have identified key themes and learned to think constructively together. We will come back for the next session because we now believe our voices will be heard, and we want to complete the work and see these ideas implemented,” added another participant.

Following a tradition of citizens’ assemblies, on the first day of the second session students from the A. I. Martynenko Rivne Children’s Art School joined the process and produced several sketches capturing the atmosphere and working dynamics of the assembly.

The first session of the citizens’ assembly took place on 28–29 March. The third and final session will be held in Rivne on 25–26 April 2026. During this session, participants will finalise, vote on and submit their recommendations to the local authorities on how to make the community a place where young people want to stay and build their future. The authorities of the Rivne community have committed to considering these recommendations.

More information about the citizens’ assembly in the Rivne community is available on the website of the Rivne City Council and under the link.

The preparation and implementation of the citizens’ assembly take place 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.