Co Creative Communities
Funding: Federal Foreign Office
Partners: MitOst e.V. (DE), EcoHub (ARM)
Duration: June – December 2024
Budget: 1,400,000 UAH
Project management: Yuliia Alenina, Yuliia Nepyk, Olga Bondarenko
Contact: office@insha-osvita.org
Co Creative Communities is an educational project in cooperation with MitOst e.V. (DE) and EcoHub (ARM), which aimed at strengthening grassroots and local democratic processes in Ukraine and Armenia.
In times of crisis, especially war, representatives of marginalized groups face discrimination of their rights even more often. Therefore, activists working with these groups need individual support, strengthening horizontal networks and developing new tools. The program focuses on developing practical skills and exploring new tools in the areas of participation, communications, accountability and transparency principles, and working with risks in crisis conditions. Special attention was paid to the participation of women and representatives of vulnerable groups.
The program in 2024 included:
- A three-day offline dialogue focused on building connections within the Ukrainian activist community, as well as identifying current needs and requests.
The meeting in Kyiv on September 12-14 was attended by 25 participants: leaders of NGOs and informal groups, activists working with people who left their homes due to war, veterans, people with disabilities, children and adolescents, neuro-differentiated people, the queer community, single mothers and fathers, etc.
- A trip by seven participants from Ukraine to a meeting organized by our partners from the EcoHub Foundation in the city of Vanadzor, Armenia.
This exchange allowed us to compare and process the experiences of two post-Soviet countries, identify common and distinctive features, and identify (in)effective practices. Also within the framework of the Vanadzor program, a meeting with representatives of local authorities was held, focused on participatory practices and their vision from the public sector perspective.
- A series of online workshops dedicated to the transformation of abandoned places into public spaces, participatory budgeting and community involvement in decision-making, as well as social cohesion as a method of overcoming the challenges of wartime.
The result of all meetings within the framework of Co-Creative Communities was the development of a toolkit: a manual with a selection of participatory tools, which was worked on by a group of Ukrainian, Armenian and German experts. It summarized the experience and collected the results of off-plan meetings in Kyiv and Vanadzor, as well as from a series of online workshops. The toolkit can be downloaded at the link.
The project was implemented by Insha Osvita in partnership with MitOst e.V. and EcoHub with funding from the German Federal Foreign Office.
