The year 2020 indeed was a difficult year. Above all, it changed the approach to work and communication with people. It made us look for new opportunities. Still, the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” has managed to turn it into a productive and successful year. The “2020 Challenges that Changed the Approaches to Activating Citizens” were discussed at the “Active Community” Forum held on December 17th, 2020. During the first day of the Forum, participants had an opportunity to take part in interactive activities and quizzes. The Forum organizers awarded the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” teams’ coordinators in various nominations and held a strategic planning session for the organization’s work and activities for 2021.

Oleksandra Hlizhynska, the Executive Director of the Institute “Respublica” and the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community”, noted that “even in the year of challenges, we managed to unite so many people around our activities and to engage them”.

“We managed to move our activities online. We held almost 1,5 thousand events. We had been telling our fellow citizens about the reforms. When citizens fail to understand what is happening in the country – it scares them. They don’t know how to act. We had been helping people see the better side, the success stories in the country. In the media, in the communication of the government with the citizens – bad things prevail. We all have been helping people to see the bright side, that many good events have been happening in the country and that it is worth being involved in the development of the country. Yet another victory is the Community Development Map. We had been engaging people in the strategic aspects, asking them what the government should do in the following 5 years. In Ukraine, the source of power is the people, thus we had been inviting people to participate in the people’s rule, in the decision-making process. We have collected over 7,000 proposals! This is incredible! People are ready to join. Many of these proposals were of strategic nature. Such proposals force the local authorities to involve district councils, regional councils, ministries in solving specific issues, thus, developing the communities,” Oleksandra noted.

The Executive Director of the Institute “Respublica” stressed that the team’s analytical work was also a significant achievement this year.

“We showed people which local council members reported on their activities, and which failed to do so. We had been promoting openness and transparency of local self-government. The analysis of the communication strategies of the parties showed that the party members did not object to presenting their internal communication strategies to our coordinators. We had been sending them letters with recommendations on how to improve such communication. There had also been the cooperation with the initiative groups, which in 79 specific problematic cases helped people to solve the issues. We create opportunities for people to become stronger.

As regards public consultations. For the first time, we held online public consultations (PCs). Over 120 people took part in a Zoom-event. We discussed the issue of the further development of education in Ukraine. Such a great number of people participating in PCs proves that this tool is important and effective. Additionally, this year we created 2 training courses on how people can join PCs,” Oleksandra added.

Another victory was the cooperation of the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” with the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

“Currently, we are being engaged in holding public consultations with the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on the Draft Law “On Political Parties”. This implies that, even at the stage of drafting the bill, we need to involve stakeholders and the target audience,” Oleksandra Hlizhynska believes.

The media outreach of the organization is also impressive.

“The results are: mass media – 507 mentions with 991,014 people reached; Facebook – 1 387 336 people; Instagram – 30 724 people; YouTube – 90 600 views. These are the figures that we had not been previously reaching in several years. This year, we reached them in 12 months. Looking at these indicators, one can see what colossal job we have done and what results we have achieved,” Oleksandra shares her impressions.

“As regards the team development. This direction included such aspects as the work with the media, “Family Book of Fairy Tales”, financial literacy, facilitation, psychological development. These activities were aimed at the delivery of even better results by our activities in the future. I am sure that the training that you had an opportunity to attend will give further results!” Oleksandra Hlizhynska noted.

Olena Botsko, the Citizen Engagement Program Director of National Democratic Institute, noted that the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” was “the only organization that worked with communities at such a level”.

“You have a team, you have a leader. And these are incredible results indeed,” Olena Botsko noted.

The coordinators of the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” also shared their experience of working in communities and involving citizens.

Hanna Melehanych, the city of Uzhhorod:

“We are doing a very important job and its special value is that the work is being carried out in ATCs. As a rule, there is plenty of activities and training opportunities in big cities, but medium and small communities really need us. And this year’s huge achievement is training,” Hanna said.

Valentyna Ponomarenko, the city of Skadovsk

“It is unknown whether the change of power is for better or for worse, but it tempers our community. Our voters and the community are becoming more conscious. And we are very glad we had a hand in this too. Our community, in turn, teaches us. And we are very grateful to it,” Valentyna noted.

Anatolii Stoian, the city of Kropyvnytskyi

“When we started working with Novoukrainska ATC, we were asked how we could help them. We suggested holding PCs, told them about the participation tools, collected the proposals for the Community Development Map. All this would make the cooperation of active citizens with the authorities fruitful,” Anatolii believes.

Olha Halushka, Cherkasy

“I wish you all to be confident in the fact that each of us is a force. It is important to unite. Together we are a force, even when this regards the implementation of cosmic ideas. In order to build a democratic state, we need to join efforts and do it together. The other important thing is to study constantly,” Olha says.

Inna Pashaiuk, Chernivtsi

“I would like to wish all the citizens to get rid of soviet, paternalistic thinking and take responsibility for their lives, and to build our state together,” Inna noted.

The Forum provided an opportunity to present the goals, mission, vision of the organization and to develop the strategy for the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” to move further in 2021.

“When people know more, they have more opportunities for influencing. Accordingly, the welfare of the country grows. The goal of the “Active Community” is to involve at least 1% of citizens in decision-making and promotion of reforms on a systemic basis. This accounts for about 400 thousand citizens,” the Executive Director and a co-founder of the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” noted.

“What does it mean “on a systemic basis”? – A person attends our events at least 3 times a year, participates in the public activities,” Oleksandra answers.

What affects the quality of the community? Oleksandra Hlizhynska further explained.

Civic education is a matter of importance. When people understand the specific powers and competences of the authorities, what the scope of responsibilities of a specific body is – they can get involved in the processes.

Citizens’ activity is the extent to which citizens are capable of applying this knowledge on the practical level.

The level of culture is the extent to which people perceive values, ethics, and similar things. If a person does not focus on such things, he or she would feel comfortable living even in a neglected country.

Security is the level of culture of safe behaviour.

Entrepreneurship development is a thing, the lack of which also disallows us to call a community successful. Communication with entrepreneurs, during our events, about how communities should develop is valuable for us. Entrepreneurs must be well involved.

An open, transparent and responsible policy is the extent to which the authorities are ready for quality communication and cooperation with citizens.

The information space means media products that help in informing citizens.

Without data collection and analysis, it is difficult to talk about development. We have our own database that helps us to see progress. It would be useful if similar things were introduced in cities.

Within the framework of the Forum, the participants summed up the outcomes of the most successful events and discussed the results of the activities.

During the second day of the Forum, on December 18th, the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community” brought together activists, experts, passionate citizens and regional coordinators.

Oleksandra Hlizhynska noted that “the goal of our forum is to increase the level of knowledge of citizens, discuss major political reforms and the changes in local self-governance. We also aim to help in improving the networking and citizen activation skills, and to promote the personal development of the Forum participants”.

The Forum featured the lectures delivered on the topics classified into 4 groups:

  1. national reforms;
  2. local self-governance;
  3. networking and public activism;
  4. personal development.

Each of the groups included lectures from prominent experts followed by active sessions of questions posed by the participants and discussions on the raised issues.

Iryna Nebesniak, a brand manager, presented the secrets of managing a YouTube channel: “It is important to understand that this platform is now in high demand and is second only to Google in terms of visits. It is visited by about 2 billion people. Thus, it is a great resource for promoting your organization”. Iryna further recounted what criteria should be considered when one wants to have the YouTube channel or a video promoted and optimized. Those criteria include:

– video and audio quality;

– description and tags;

– use of advertising tools;

– distribution of the video on other platforms.

Lidiia Solonukha, an SMM-specialist of the Tabletochki Charity Foundation, lectured on the tools for involving citizens through Facebook.

“As of today, this platform is very popular for spreading news, promoting your ideas and organization, however, there are specific rules that must be followed when working with Facebook if you want to attract as many as possible concerned people. Moreover, the involvement of people on Facebook accounts for 15 million people. For comparison, this figure on Instagram reaches 13 million,” Lidiia Solonukha says.

The SMM specialist shared the following interesting facts and tips:

1. 60% of Facebook users are women, which should be taken into account when creating the content of a page.

2. 11,25 million people attend Facebook from phones, thus you should elaborate on the way of visualizing your content since it should be optimized for phones.

3. The quality of the profile and coverage is affected by a number of factors (listed below). Moreover, the outreach depends on the specific emotion you put into your post: if you call for action, motivate, give hope, or express solidarity, the post will gather more network users.

4. Daily stories featuring questions increase coverage.

5. Weekly analytics of your page is necessary if you want to know which topics of your page are interesting to the users and which are not.

6. A detailed content plan will help you optimize the page and effectively attract network users to it.

7. Participate in thematic flashmobs! This promotes your page in the news feed.

8. Ask yourself: “Would I leave a like to my post and share it?”. If it deserves a positive answer, then feel free to publish the post! Negative? Think about what is missing.

For reference. The events were held with the support of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and with the financial support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Note. The mission of the “Active Community” is to achieve prosperity through the democratic development of Ukrainian communities. The goal for 2025 is to activate and involve at least 1% of citizens in decision-making and promotion of reforms in Ukraine on a systemic basis for the well-being of Ukrainian communities. The initiative was created through the activities of the Institute “Respublica”. We are working to increase the civil activity of citizens.

Authored by Tetiana Kavunenko, the head of the press service of the Institute “Respublica” and the All-Ukrainian Initiative “Active Community”