Workshop for participants of the Municipal managers for the recovery period Training Program

Representatives of 28 communities of Ukraine have taken the first practical step in preparing for reconstruction of their communities. The first module of the Community Recovery Academy educational program ended with a two-day on-site workshop that combined theory with practice and gave participants invaluable experience on real-life examples of recovery.

The first day of the workshop opened in the city of Bucha, where participants had the opportunity to learn about specific projects to rebuild the city after de-occupation. At the Bucha City Council, key city officials shared their experience: Dmytro Gapchenko, Manager of the city's affairs, Vadym Naumov, Chief architect, Tetiana Lipinska, Head of the Economic Development and Investment Department, and Olena Renchka, Director of the Resilience Centre.

They spoke in detail about reconstruction of social, communal and housing infrastructure, presented an updated master plan of the city, taking into account the consequences of occupation, and shared their experience of memorialization and work with trauma in the community.

The second part of the first day was devoted to the work in Kyiv, where participants, together with mediator Diana Protsenko, discussed mechanisms of interaction with the community and planning further steps. Particular attention was paid to the presentation of the Fast Recovery Plan developed by the Mariupol City Council, which was presented by Vasyl Klat, Director of the Department of Transport and Communications.

Once this rapid action plan was presented, participants split into groups to work on improving individual components, offering innovative solutions and adapting approaches to the specifics of different communities. The teamwork resulted in a joint discussion, during which participants presented their findings and received feedback from experts and colleagues.

The final presentation for the communities was made by the Deputy Mayor Sergiy Zakharov, who shared an architectural vision for Mariupol's recovery, which inspired the participants to reflect on possible ways to revive their communities.

Under the guidance of Tetiana Nahorniak, Dean of the Faculty, Iryna Zaichenko, Associate Professor and Ihor Ozadovsky, PhD candidate in Political Science, participants worked on the important aspect of community development – their positioning. The experts helped the communities analyse their unique features and strengths to avoid externally imposed stereotypes, such as “southern Palmira” for Odesa or “the first capital of Ukraine” for Kharkiv.

Participants worked in teams to create stakeholder maps, sharing experiences and ideas on how to engage different stakeholder groups in recovery processes. This format allowed trainees to look at their territories from different angles and take into account the experience of their colleagues when assessing their own opportunities and challenges.

The final stage included teamwork on creating correlation matrices of strategic recovery and development objectives: analysing relationships between different aspects of

recovery, identifying priority areas and developing preliminary action plans.

The Community Recovery Academy, founded by the Association of Ukrainian Cities and the NGO “Mariupol.Reborn”, aims at training municipal managers for the recovery period. The project is implemented with the support of the UK Government under the UK International Development program and the International R

epublican Institute (IRI Ukraine) in partnership with Metinvest and SCM. The academic partners of the project are Metinvest Polytechnic and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.