On July 8-10 2015 a regular training workshop, held by DESPRO as part of support of initiatives of territorial communities on organization of strategic planning process at the local level, took place in the city of Kiev.

A three-day workshop was dedicated to development of the plans of action and monitoring of community development strategies, as well as participation of communities in the process of territorial unification. Participants included members of committees (workgroups) for strategic planning of territorial communities from three oblasts:

·          Teplivka village council of Pyryatyn raion of Poltava oblast;

·          Nova Sloboda village council of Putyvl raion of Sumy oblast;

·          Volodymyrivka village council of Tomakivka raion of Dnipropetrovsk oblast.  

Participants received consultations concerning their newly-developed local development strategies. At the beginning of the workshop every community presented its “homework” – a developed SWOT-analysis and strategic vision of goals and tasks of development of their territory, which had been defined and discussed in workgroups at previous workshops. Beside that, community representatives, together with strategic development expert Olena Kozlyuk, defined the potential indicators of strategy implementation efficiency in the context of development goals and tasks, and worked on the stratgey of coordination of their development plans with raion and oblast strategies and programmes. The question of sustainable rural development and unification of territorial communities in the context of Euro-integration was considered separately. Roman Korinets, the President of the National association of agricultural advisory services of Ukraine, was invited to participate in the discussion: “While developing your strategy, you need to follow the triune sustainable development concept: economical development, social progress, and responsibility for environment. Sustainable development is only possible under unification of these three components”.

High efficiency of work in groups should be noted: communities had a task to model a hypothetical unified territorial community, develop, and present its strategy, and, thus, consolidate and test the newly-acquired strategic planning skills in practice.

The process of finalization of local development strategies continues. Participants of workgroups from the three oblasts will keep on working – both remotely (through online platform) and during next workshop meetings

 All materials, used during training, as well as participants’ projects can be found on the web platform of Community of practice “Innovations and best practices of local self-government” ―http://mx.despro.org.ua:8081/course/view.php?id=38