Representatives from all ICC-Ukraine member-cities – Lutsk, Odessa, Sumy, Vynnytsia, and Melitopol - gathered in Pavlograd for a two-day seminar-training on the ICC Strategy development. The opening of the seminar took place in the City Hall with the participation of the City Mayor Mr. Anatoliy Vershina, the local ICC coordinator and Deputy Mayor Ms. Olena Shulika, the representatives of the departments of education, social care, and culture, city community, media representatives, national minorities, IDPs, relavant NGOs and associations.
«Our city’s potential is in the diversity of its residents - said Mr. Vershina, - and the fact that Pavlograd officially joined the ICC-Ukraine network in 2016 reinforced our confidence to involve the representatives of national minorities in our city’s life…”
The national ICC-Ukraine coordinator, Dr. Kseniya Rubicondo, emphasised that the time is ripe for Ukrainian network members to launch their ICC strategies development, as all Ukrainian cities have been ICC Index tested and received their analysis reports, assessing the degree of interculturality of every city, and providing the Network members with a reliable “departure point” for ICC strategies’ development.
Under the guidance of the national ICC-UA coordinator participating cities carried out a step-by-step review of the ICC Index results of Pavlograd, the last Index tested Ukrainian city. Additionally, for the first time, the city of Pavlograd publicly presented its intercultural city motto “Unity of our community is in its cultural diversity”. The motto was also included to city-designed ICC banner exhibited during the meeting. The ICC team of Pavlograd has also taken the initiative to design the ICC-Ukraine Network logo that lists 6 city-member names and emblems.
The ICC Strategy development training, provided by Dr. Rubicondo, offered the basic tools and key methodological approach the cities need to start move forward with their ICC strategy development.
The approach is based on the 3 main steps:
- ICC Index results decoding and classification for each city
- ICC citizenship test results collection and analysis
- breakdown of the results using the ICC adapted SWOT approach and seeking the city administrators/stakeholders input.
To assure the coverage/representation of the city population and administration likewise, this approach includes three dimensions: i) institutional/analytical (ICC Index Test); ii. community/citizens (intercultural citizenship test); iii. and city administrators/stakeholders (via Task Force/Working groups on strategy design).
As a condition for the participation in this training, the ICC UA coordinator had asked the cities to prepare their “ICC Index Cards” that listed their weaknesses and strengths (according to their most recent ICC Index Analysis). These cards served as “snapshot-summaries” of the degree of “interculturality” of each city that could be very quickly and effectively presented to others in the room. Then, following the introduction of the ICC-adapted SWOP approach, the participants were tasked to explore in groups and present their conclusions about how the weaknesses and risks of their cities could be dealt with using their strengths and opportunities, and what locally available human and financial resources could be deployed for that.
Upon the training, the cities gathered to provide feedback, share thoughts/conclusions and suggest their tentative schedules for their individual ICC strategy development.
Vinnytsia was the first city to take the training-proposed approach onboard. On November 1, 2018 the city already applied the proposed methodology to the work of its 2nd Task Group meeting on ICC Strategy development. The 3rd TG meeting is planned by the city on Nov 29 and the 4th final meeting will be held on 20 December 2018. This work should result into a Draft ICC Strategy for Vinnytsia, to be considered for approval at the beginning of 2019.
The city of Sumy is in the process of modifying their overall city strategy until 2020 and the training helped them with a few ideas on how to include intercultural aspect in this updated general strategy.
All cities agreed that the members of the ICC-UA network could pilot the ICC Citizenship Test this year, which would also provide them with a second key element for their ICC strategy development.
GET THE LATEST UPDATES
