On 5^th August round table “Traditions as a Factor for Communities Self-Organization” took place in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast State Administration. Cooperation of village, small towns and municipal communities with international structures was discussed. Representatives of power, non-governmental organizations and mass media took part in it. Organizers also invited representatives of Swiss-Ukrainian project “Decentralization Support in Ukraine”. The later shared the experience re implementing decentralized services models in the village as well as presented the competition on best publications in media “Uniting the Community!”

Mykhaylo Vyshyvanyuk, Head of Oblast State Administration outlined in his speech the experience on constructive collaboration between authorities and territorial communities as well as international organizations successfully operating in the region. In particular, he stressed the positive changes in people’s minds resulted from such cooperation, i.e. from consumer psychology to economic and initiative ones.  Speech of Oksana Garnets, DESPRO Senior Coordinator in Ukraine became a logical extension of Mr. Vyshyvanyuk thought. She spoke in detail about DESPRO objectives and methods of work in pilot regions, about obtained results and plans on dissemination of knowledge and experience models for other regions of Ukraine. “Developing the active self-sufficient community together with technical challenges on improving the basic services is the goal we are working for”, - she underlined.

Specific positive practices re communities’ activity revealed in their speeches Roman Strutynsky, Deputy Head of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast State Administration and Volodymyr Harazd, Mayor of Dolyna.  

The audience was pretty interested in the presentation on mechanisms of implementing local projects on water-supply and solid waste management, made by Vyacheslav Kozak, DESPRO social mobilization specialist.

It was proved by numerous journalists’ and audience’s questions. In his presentation, Vyacheslav Kozak briefly but informatively described the mechanisms and schemes, which served for local projects organizational base. It is expected that transfer of these knowledge, methodical recommendations and experience would become the base for knowledge system dissemination beyond DESPRO pilot regions.

Presentation of initiated by DESPRO competition on best publications in media “Uniting the Community!”, made by Valeriya Bondarenko, Head of Creative Association “Slavuta” and competition’s co-organizer, became the final accord of round table. Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast journalists, who have a lot of interesting topics for publications will take an active part in the above competition.