Who works most actively with Project Navigator in communities

Behind every active community in Project Navigator stands a specific person. They work with data and projects, look for new opportunities, maintain contacts and help make their community visible beyond its boundaries. In the first six months of the platform’s active operation, we can already see coordinators who are gradually becoming local development leaders.

What determines the prospects of a small community today?

Budget? Population? The presence of large enterprises? Of course, all of this matters.

But one more resource is becoming increasingly important – people who are able to find opportunities for their community and turn them into concrete projects.

These are exactly the kind of people we increasingly see among Project Navigator coordinators.

What is Project Navigator

It is a digital ecosystem for Ukrainian communities that helps turn community needs, data, strategic and planning documents and expert assessments into concrete project ideas and gradually prepare them for potential funding.

The platform’s logic is quite simple: do not start by looking for a grant, but first understand the community’s need, confirm it with data, develop a solution, assess it and prepare a project.

In a single digital environment, a community can work with data, documents and projects, and see their status and next steps. The platform’s development also envisages interaction with regional military administrations, experts, businesses, partners and donors. The most well-prepared project ideas can enter the project pipeline for further work with potential partners. View Project Navigator → pronavigator.eu

Today, Project Navigator already brings together about 120 territorial communities (hromadas) of Ukraine.

But a digital platform on its own changes nothing.

Data does not update itself. A project idea does not turn into a prepared project on its own. And a community does not become visible to potential partners just because it has been given a digital account.

That takes a person.

That is why, in every community that works with Project Navigator, a special role belongs to the coordinator.

A coordinator is already more than a platform administrator

At first, the coordinator’s role might have looked mostly technical: registering the community, working with the account, updating information and keeping in touch with the Project Navigator team.

The experience of recent months shows much more.

A strong coordinator gradually becomes one of the community’s own resources.

For a small community, this is especially important.

A large city may have an economic department, an international cooperation office, an investment office and several project management specialists.

In a small community, a significant part of this work often rests on one or a few active people.

They know where to find the necessary data. They remember which projects have already been discussed. They can quickly prepare information for a partner, join a working meeting, take part in training or present the community’s needs.

And if such a person exists, that is already a competitive advantage for the community.

A community should see an opportunity in its coordinator

We would like this to be understood not only by the coordinators themselves, but above all by the leadership and residents of communities.

If a coordinator takes part in professional events, training and working groups, communicates with Ukrainian and international partners, works on projects and represents their community beyond its boundaries – this is not a secondary activity done “after the main job”.

This is work for the community’s development.

One professional contact can eventually grow into a partnership. A well-presented community problem can become the basis of a future project. And a prepared project can get a chance of funding when a suitable programme appears.

Of course, a coordinator cannot guarantee a community a grant or an investment.

But a coordinator can do something without which an opportunity for funding often does not arise at all: help the community be prepared, clear and visible.

A community’s visibility has real value today

An international partner or donor physically cannot know hundreds of Ukrainian communities equally well.

So communities have to compete not only for money.

First, they compete for attention.

Can the community quickly explain which problems it is solving? Which projects it is preparing? Why exactly these are the priorities? What data supports this? What has already been done? What is the next step? And, finally, who is the contact person for taking this conversation further?

When there are clear answers to these questions, a community is much easier to notice.

That is why a coordinator’s presence at Ukrainian and international events, in training programmes, professional networks and meetings with partners is also promotion of the community itself.

And such people are worth supporting.

The most active Project Navigator coordinators in the first six months of the platform’s active operation

In the first six months or so of the platform’s active operation, a group of coordinators who work systematically with Project Navigator has already formed.

They include:

• Hanna Lysenko – Novoorzhytska community, Poltava Oblast;

• Yuliia Nesen – Dmytrivska community, Kyiv Oblast;

• Marta Ilkiv – Boryslavska community, Lviv Oblast;

• Yevheniia Stoliarchuk – Liubomlska community, Volyn Oblast;

• Hennadii Polukhin – Koblivska community, Mykolaiv Oblast;

• Maryna Diduk – Shepetivska community, Khmelnytskyi Oblast;

• Nataliia Kuzma – Kamianska community, Zakarpattia Oblast;

• Mariia Romaniuk – Rozdilnianska community, Odesa Oblast;

• Dora Tsymbalar – Novoborysivska community, Odesa Oblast;

• Iryna Pukalova – Katlabuzka community, Odesa Oblast.

We deliberately do not want to turn this list into a sports league table.

Activity in the digital system is only one of the indicators. What matters much more is that these people demonstrate a readiness to work on their community’s development systematically and to go beyond their current administrative tasks.

Such people need to be noticed

This is addressed primarily to the leadership of communities.

If your community has a person who looks for new opportunities, works on projects, represents the community externally, maintains contacts with partners and is ready to keep learning – do not take that for granted.

Such a coordinator needs access to information from different structural units. They should be involved in discussions of strategic and investment decisions. They need to be given the opportunity to take part in professional events and to represent the community where new contacts and partnerships may arise.

And the residents themselves should also know such people.

Because a local development leader is not necessarily a top-level official.

Sometimes it is a person who one day began to systematically collect their community’s projects, look for opportunities and speak about the community in places where it was simply not known before.

From a network of coordinators to a community of development-minded people

We want the network of Project Navigator coordinators to gradually become a community of development-minded people, and not just a network of users of a digital platform.

So that coordinators from different regions know one another, share experience, see the solutions of other communities, take part in joint working meetings and are able to represent their communities at a wider Ukrainian and international level.

Then Project Navigator will perform one more function, which may not have been so obvious at the beginning.

It will connect not only data, documents, needs and projects.

It will connect people capable of moving these projects forward.

And perhaps one of the indicators of a community’s prospects will increasingly be a very simple question:

Who in your community is responsible for making sure its next opportunity is not lost?