PARASOL: Recovery Ukraine Together — Report on the Round Table and Future Plans

At the beginning of the summer, the PARASOL project was launched to help small towns and villages in the Dnipro region recover after difficult times. This project brought together the efforts of the RCErBs fund, the Bankwatch Network, the Ecoaction NGO, and other active citizens.

However, at the request of communities from other regions, we decided to expand the project's geographical scope.

In mid-August, a round table was held in Kyiv at the Ecoaction office, which has already become familiar to many communities across Ukraine.

This time, the list of guests was expanded to include representatives from the Dolynska and Znamianka municipalities in the Kirovohrad region, who joined their colleagues from the Petropavlivska, Chumaky, and Yurivka communities in the Dnipro region, the very communities that were at the origin of this project.

Colleagues from neighboring regions shared their experiences in addressing the challenges currently faced by communities.

All the communities represented at this event are at different stages of strategic recovery planning.

• some have comprehensive recovery programs ready;

• some have municipal energy plans and environmental safety strategies;

• and some have already identified priority projects and are successfully implementing them.

Many communities expressed a desire to learn how to successfully implement recovery projects. Therefore, we decided to organize study tours so that communities could learn from each other's experiences.

The main goal of these tours should be for communities to gain practical experience from the creative and unconventional solutions of their colleagues, which positively impact community development.

There is also a possibility of involving small communities from the European Union that would be interested in implementing joint projects with communities in Ukraine.

The PARASOL project plans to continue selecting active participants to analyze and promote practices and innovative solutions for recovery and sustainable development among communities in other regions.

The project also sees a crucial role in maximizing the inclusion of public suggestions, mechanisms, and actions that can be applied during the preliminary analysis of community recovery. Therefore, the project is open to cooperation with public organizations that are ready to participate in the practical development of such mechanisms.

What are the plans for the future?

The PARASOL project continues to actively develop. Our next steps are:

Study tours: We will organize trips to communities that have already succeeded in recovery so others can see firsthand how it works.

Joint projects: We will support community initiatives aimed at restoring infrastructure, developing the economy, and the social sphere.

Geographical expansion: We plan to involve new communities from various regions of Ukraine and other countries in the project.

Join us!

If your community aims to recover and develop, we are ready to support you. Together, we can rebuild our country and make it even better.

To participate in the project, please contact: +380 98 290 3636

Ruslan Shcherbakov, President of the NGO "Regional Center for Economic Research and Business Support" (RCErBs), Lubny