Establishing participatory, open, transparent, and inclusive decision-making processes promotes public trust in democratic institutions and strengthens good democratic governance. Within this aim, the Council of Europe project “Strengthening civil participation in the democratic decision-making in Ukraine” has been providing support to municipalities and regional authorities in establishing inclusive participatory processes, especially, around the most important decisions that affect citizens’ life, promoting the enabling environment for civil society engagement and volunteer activity in the recovery and reconstruction process.

In the municipalities of Zhovkva and Novoyavorivsk (Lviv region) the project has been supporting the local authorities in planning and rolling out the participatory processes around the development of the community strategies to ensure the citizens’ right and opportunities to express their opinions in the course of local decision-making and implementation of important policies which have an impact on their lives. Different methodologies and forms of engagement helped identify the right stakeholders, apply the appropriate engagement and communication strategies, through the deliberation and consultation develop the strategic objectives, scenarios of the community development and the implementation action plan.

“Everybody’s voice must be considered, including the voices of seldom heard and vulnerable groups, IDPs, people affected by war, young people, vulnerable and marginalised groups. It is one of the best ways of addressing the existing and potential problems and challenges Ukrainian communities face at the time of war, tackling the lack of public confidence in democratic institutions and decorrelation between citizens’ preferences and decisions made by public authorities”, - underscored the senior project officer Volodymyr Kebalo.

Throughout the process citizens, CSOs, local authorities, business and relevant stakeholders provided their inputs to the process, identifying the problems and proposing solutions. “The development of the strategy is a socio-economic justification of the community's perspective. Its purpose is to outline specific directions of the development for the next years, which will allow to clearly understand the needs of the residents”, - stated Zhovkva City Mayor Oleh Volskyi. “This is not the first meeting on the development of the community strategy, at which all interested parties are present. It is especially nice to see the young people who want changes and are ready to make them together. The strategy is developed to determine the development priorities: where, what, and when will be implemented in the community, so that residents’ lives become better, so that people want to live and work here”, - said Novoyavorivsk First Deputy Mayor Halyna Dzhulai.

In addition to the online activities and expert advice, the mentoring support enabled the local authorities effectively and inclusively deliberate at the in-person meetings and activities within the participatory process. The strategy development comprises of online expert support, stakeholder mapping, focus groups, interviews, surveys, data analysis, sectoral participatory events, including the CivicLab workshops. To discuss the outcomes of the participatory development of the community strategies as well as recommendations for the future project planning, multiple requests from the authorities from across Ukraine to support the participatory development of community strategies, online lessons learned workshops will be organised and bring together the stakeholders from the pilot municipalities.