Results of the First Session of the School of Community Leaders

Svitlana Matviienko, Executive director of the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, congratulated the participants with the opening of the School of Community Leaders. She emphasised extraordinary value of civic education in general. Projects, such as the School of Community Leaders, are seeds in concrete actions and real steps of change throughout Ukraine. The School of Community Leaders aims to push Ukrainian communities to changes and to provide them with necessary knowledge for implementation of transformations.

The participants of the School immediately plunged headlong into their studies and Ivan Gomza, PhD in Political Sciences, Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Public Administration of Kiyv School of Economics, helped them with this. He also held a discussion about political Saturnalia and what to do when politics turns into a carnival? In politics, there is no division into bad and good, there are facts. Today it is a fact that politics is carnivalised as a global trend: when “buffoons” and “pseudo-politicians” come to power and a political process turns into a show. Is there any danger in this? Absolutely. But this is reality we live in. And there are opportunities in it also.

The reform started quickly and received support at home and abroad. However, in the process of its implementation, naturally, difficulties arose: decentralisation of power dictates the need for sectoral reforms – in education, healthcare, culture, sports, civil protection, and security. Without accompanying reforms, decentralisation loses its meaning.

Why are citizens in democratic societies mostly dissatisfied with representative authorities? Will the reform of electoral legislation take into account interests of local self-government and what to do about it? To what extent is political corruption a norm? Participants of the discussion panel spoke about all these issues with Olha Aivazovska, Chair of the management board of the International Renaissance Foundation and chair of the management board and coordinator of political programmes of the Civil network OPORA.

Elections and political indifference of voters, use of administrative resources for ”a dirty play”, subventions for socio-economic development of territories and problems with political parties in the regions – the School participants had an active dialogue all evening and exchanged experience and interesting cases on those topics.

Reform of the healthcare system always raises a lot of questions among people, especially in the regions, because it did not start well everywhere. Therefore, it is essential to inform community leaders about what changes are needed in the healthcare system and what to do to save people on the ground – during and after the pandemic – and how to provide community residents with high-quality medical services.

Oleh Petrenko – First head of the National Health Service of Ukraine (2018-2019), independent director for Strategic Development in the Medical Network “Dobrobut”, 2006 USPS alumnus, told the participants about beginning of the reform, a concept of development of the healthcare system and about importance of strong institutions. Our participants could speak to the person who was at the origins of the reform: how the healthcare is funded, what are the difficulties in implementing the reform, and how people are fighting for preservation of unprofitable and inefficient hospitals.

Kateryna Bulavinova, Doctor, pediatric infectious diseases specialist, and medical expert at the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF Ukraine), took the discussion to a more practical level. She told participants about errors during the fight against COVID-19 pandemic, maintenance and support of local hospitals, and about medical infrastructure in general.

Why is a community the third pillar, and how innovation, education, and entrepreneurship have become engines of productivity growth? Pavlo Sheremeta, Founder of the analytical center proryv.in.ua, member of the Supervisory Board of the City Institute, Minister of economic development and trade (February-September 2014), gave answers to those questions. Using examples of Eastern countries, he explained how to move from constant stagnation to constant recovery and explained specifics of development of Ukrainian economy through the prism of culture and demography.

The discussion continued with a topic of whether there will be further harm to business from the pandemic and how Ukrainian economy can catch up with its western neighbours. Hlib Vyshlinskiy, executive director of the Centre for economic strategy, explained what structural changes occurred after the quarantine began and how the pandemic affected the economy as a whole. Also, he spoke about the “big construction”, low level of investment, prospects for growth of Ukrainian GDP, and a role of human capital in development of the economy.

How is the education reform going, and how the concept of a “new Ukrainian school” being implemented in the regions? What to do with schools? And what is more important – quality of education or material and technical support of schools? We talked about all this and more with educational Ombudsman Serhiy Horbachov and Alyona Parfionova, co-Chair of the civic association “Parents SOS”, 2016 USPS alumna.

To ensure good education, it is necessary to reorganise the educational network and establish communication with communities. Education is a large infrastructure system that is difficult to optimise due to a number of problems. One of them is the problem of HR. Often, principals or local officials are busier with solving infrastructure problems than managing the educational process. Although the pandemic has greatly changed the situation. Beginning of the quarantine drew attention of teachers to the need to transit to online education and to provide schools with high-speed internet and equipment. However, this is not enough for introduction of effective education management in communities.

The right to safe life and environment is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine. And the topic of Environment Protection is more relevant than ever. So, this year’s programme pays a lot of attention to development of a local environmental policy and its integration into the community development strategy. The environment panel consisted of two dimensions: theoretical and practical. Olena Maslyukivska, Associate Professor of the Department of ecology of National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, 2008 USPS alumna, was responsible for the first of them, and she told our participants about the most pressing environmental problems and how to properly prioritise the sequence of their solutions in communities.

In the more practical part of the discussion, two experts shared their own cases on implementing changes and improving quality of the environment in their own cities. Artem Myrgorodskiy, executive director of GreenAge, CEO of BioBin, and a 2007 USPS alumnus, spoke about waste recycling and his successful experience of how a socially important business can bring both benefits to people and monetisation. Artem Romanyukov, co-founder of Saveecobot, director of the NGO SaveDnipro, 2018 USPS alumnus, spoke about problems that he faced during the struggle for clean air in his hometown and how communities can improve local air quality on their own.

Why is it important to organise the space in which you live, and how does this affect quality of life and mind of people, how to make “buildings for people, not people for buildings”? Is there a link between architecture and democracy? And how do aesthetics and architecture affect the mind? Our participants were able to talk about all this with Anna Kyrii, architect, deputy chairman of the architectural Chamber of the National Union of architects of Ukraine, founder and head of Anna Kyrii Architectural and Design Group and 2016 USPS alumna.

Legal capacity of a community is one of the fundamental aspects for its development. However, how to strengthen it and provide communities with access to justice?

Andriy Vyshnevsky, MPP (Oxon), lawyer, founding director of the national system of providing free legal aid, Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine (2012-2017), honored lawyer of Ukraine and chairman of the Board of Transparency International Ukraine, told the participants about the concept of two types of justice, impact of decentralisation on access to justice and satisfaction of legal needs of citizens.

The level of dissatisfaction with legal needs in Ukraine is high. This is partly due to the fact that communities do not identify legal problems and ignore their solution. At the same time, unmet legal needs feed the cycle of decline and slow down development of communities.

For development of democracy, it is necessary to involve citizens in the decision-making process. However, how can local governments get closer to people in the digital age? The participants talked about this with Serhiy Hunko, coordinator for regional digitalisation of Swiss-Ukrainian EGAP programme implemented by the Eastern Europe Foundation. The expert told participants about how to change the process of providing services, to digitalise document flow, and why digitalisation of business and the state is so important for public participation.

The second part of the discussion concerned more traditional tools that the Agency for Legislative Initiatives has long been “lobbying” in Ukraine. Maria Sokolova, analyst at the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, shared with participants insights and mechanisms for conducting a social audit and Town Hall Meetings.

Social audit is an effective means of ensuring accountability of authorities by studying an opinion of the final recipients of service or public policy. Simply put, it is a way to verify compliance with obligations by authorities. Another tool that we introduced to our participants is Town Hall Meeting – an informal public meeting of residents of a certain territory. We discussed mechanisms of holding meetings and their scenarios. And, of course, we shared experience of meetings already held.

The first session of the School of Community Leaders was closed by Oleksandr Sushko, Ukrainian political scientist and public figure, executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation, expert in international relations and civil society development.

Democracy begins from the bottom. Mature democracy cannot be introduced if there is no stratum of people who have both value orientations and practical knowledge about how to implement all this. We need people who know how to work with people, how to gain trust but also have managerial skills. Community leaders are just such people. Thanks to such leaders, people get a sense of belonging, and then real democracy is forming. Real democracy does not mean to come and vote once every 5 years. It implies constantly being a participant in a certain process that is forming the background of the state.

The School of Community Leaders is a programme of the Ukrainian School of Political Studies and the Agency for legislative initiatives, which is implemented with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.