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Caritas-Spes Ukraine holds II All-Ukrainian Public Forum in Kyiv

Caritas-Spes Ukraine holds II All-Ukrainian Public Forum in Kyiv

The online event gathered over 600 participants and viewers from different parts of Ukraine. The Forum was the result of the Mission's work for a year and brought together partners to discuss opportunities for joint development and support of projects aimed at community development.

The Forum was held within the framework of the project Strengthening Local Self-Organization and Civic Engagement in Ukraine, implemented with the support of the German Government and the Renovabis Foundation. The Foundation has been a reliable partner of the Mission for over 20 years.

For the last three years the Renovabis Foundation has been supporting volunteering and community self-reliance in Ukraine. Joachim Sauer, the Foundation's advisor, joined the Forum online, directly from Germany, to show his support and emphasize the importance of the ability of communities to solve their own needs.

"We say - Do not wait for the state to help you, but make changes in society yourself. This does not mean that the state no longer bears its responsibilities. On the contrary, the state should provide all the opportunities for the development and support of public initiatives. This helps to organize social life together with state structures. The church can be a serious partner together with the state in organizing the social life of society. Renovabis Foundation with its support gives Caritas-Spes Ukraine an impetus to further develop such initiatives," said Mr. Joachim.  

Father Petro Zharkovskyi, President of the Caritas-Spes Mission of the Roman Catholic Church in Ukraine, opened the Forum with words of gratitude and greeted the participants and the winners of the project competition. "This year we have many innovations and surprises. Due to the pandemic, each of us faced challenges that were to be addressed. Our 32 Caritas-Spes Ukraine centers across Ukraine have reformatted their work. We were looking for the best ways to help people in the new reality. This Forum is also held in an online format. Another innovation this year is that we are able to support the best projects submitted to us with microgrants. I hope that this will launch a number of good deeds in your parishes and in your regions as well".

The Forum consisted of expert panels.

The first panel was called "Ideas", because all good initiatives start with an idea. The moderator was Vira Usyk, Vice President of the NGO Young Agents of Change, facilitator of the Active Citizens program from the British Council. Together with the speakers - Oleksandr Yarema, State Secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Nataliia Klymova, Manager of Organizational Development of ISAR "Yednannia", and Serhii Zamidra, Deputy Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Association of Communities, we discussed the issues of modern trends and ideas, the impact of COVID-19 on our lives; whether civil society in Ukraine is an "influential player" today; why it is important to change the public environment and start changes with ourselves? "Self-reliance is the number one challenge for society. This is a Plast concept that we promote at the national level. Because today we are prevented from being self-reliant by ignorance of tools and a certain paternalistic society, when there is an expectation of help "from above". Now we want to invest in sustainability and counteract populism. Our organization has a slogan - "There is no magician coming to help you", you have to work together to make the country different. Another trend in the development of civil society is to take care of people, of staff, because it is a long game," said Ms. Klymova.  "Life in general is a long game. We are a democratic country. It is wrong to expect that everything will go in one direction. Development trends are different. But interaction is the key.

We have to involve the maximum number of people working in the public sector. We have to show a new culture of interaction. We have to show the best practices where cooperation between the state and the community shows good results. We have to find points of interaction, agree on joint plans and move forward," added Mr. Yarema.     

The second panel, "People", was dedicated to the team and the importance of developing leaders. Companies change dynamically from project to project. But even the most successful idea cannot be implemented without people. What is more important - business or people? How important is it to create quality opportunities for people? How to present volunteer opportunities correctly? This was discussed in the second part of the II All-Ukrainian Public Forum "Ideas. People. Opportunities". The moderator was Olha Lushchyk, facilitator, certified business trainer, coach. The speakers of the panel were Fr. Mykhailo, head of the St. Martin's Center, and Yuliia Sokhach, professional certified coach of the International Coaching Federation ICF; Andrii Kuzmiak, CO "Lviv Educational Foundation", manager of the mentoring program of the volunteer program "Building Ukraine Together", joined us online.

The second panel, "People", was dedicated to the team and the importance of developing leaders. Companies change dynamically from project to project. But even the most successful idea cannot be implemented without people. What is more important - business or people? How important is it to create quality opportunities for people? How to present volunteer opportunities correctly? This was discussed in the second part of the II All-Ukrainian Public Forum "Ideas. People. Opportunities". The moderator was Olha Lushchyk, facilitator, certified business trainer, coach. The speakers of the panel were Fr. Mykhailo, head of the St. Martin's Center, and Yuliia Sokhach, professional certified coach of the International Coaching Federation ICF; Andrii Kuzmiak, CO "Lviv Educational Foundation", manager of the mentoring program of the volunteer program "Building Ukraine Together", joined us online.     

The fourth panel addressed the issue of sustainability. The panel "Sustainability" was moderated by Fr. Viacheslav Hrynevych, Secretary General of Caritas-Spes Ukraine. The speakers were Lidiia Pashchuk, President of K.Fund, PhD in Economics, Associate Professor of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, International Institute of Business, consultant to international organizations; Olha Shavarova, manager of the program "Social School Entrepreneurship in Rural Areas and Small Towns of Ukraine", and Tetiana Kalinichenko, press secretary of Caritas-Spes Ukraine and communications expert. During the lively discussion, the concept of "sustainability" was discussed. What it means and why sustainability in projects receives the highest scores from experts of new funds that have started working in Ukraine? Why is project sustainability so important and what are good examples of successful social entrepreneurship cases? What is the secret of sustainability of long-term programs of Caritas-Spes Ukraine?  

At the end of the Forum, 11 best projects submitted for the competition received microgrants from the RM Caritas-Spes Ukraine.

Olena Shevchuk, project manager of the Strengthening Local Self-Organization and Civic Engagement in Ukraine project, said that this year the situation with Covid-19 made adjustments to the project implementation and accelerated the transition of Caritas-Spes Ukraine training programs to the digital environment. "We completely reformatted the approaches to training, invited experienced trainers to partner with us, who helped to update the programs and assisted our participants in the Training of Trainers (TOT) and the Autumn Project School. This year we graduated 14 trainers and 45 participants of the Autumn Project School. 20 projects were applied for pitching, 17 of them were submitted to us for the Competition and the best ones received grant support.  At this Forum, we wanted to show the whole chain of writing and implementing social action projects: from the birth of the Idea, with the help of People, through the search for Opportunities and, finally, to achieve Sustainability - the continuation of the work after the project is completed. We believe that we succeeded in this plan, and next year we will prepare even more interesting ideas, innovations, speakers and hopefully we will be able to come together to congratulate the winners of the competitions and share the joy of the implemented projects", summed up the project manager and organizer of the Forum, Ms. Olena Shevchuk.

26 November 2020
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