In order to ensure effective citizens’ engagement in the decision-making in the time of COVID-19 constraints, recently the CoE Project has been assisting Drohobych in planning and conducting online consultations for the reconstruction of a street in the city Center. The Project was guiding Drohobych city council in deploying proper dialogue methods and ensuring high-quality public consultations using most diverse channels of communication, stakeholder mapping, high-quality pre-consultation phase, consideration of the views of all critical audiences. The most encouraging and unprecedented results has been achieved: for the first time in Drohobych history during almost 1 month 1280 citizens visited the official website of Drohobych city council (previously this number did not exceed 250), 1 % of Drohobych citizens took part in public consultations, and more than 1000 people were watching online presentation of the final report of public consultations.
Moreover, as part of COVID-19 response, the Project is currently introducing the online Academy of Civil participation for local public servants and representatives of civil society, which was developed considering local needs and tailored to Drohobych context. 16 civil participation international and Ukrainian experts engaged, 10 hours of training information, 418 slides and as a result - the unique course dedicated to the implementation of the Charter of Drohobych amalgamated community will begin on Monday. Its main aim is raising awareness of civil participation instruments that are guaranteed by the Charter and ensuring mechanisms for civil participation to strengthen good democratic governance and solve local problems of Drohobych community.
The CoE Project "Promoting Civil Participation in Democratic Decision-Making in Ukraine" transformed the usual means of communication, trainings and cooperation activities into online format offering continues online assistance in ensuring civil participation in the decision-making process to pilot municipalities in Ukraine, one of them is Drohobych. The Project has been supporting local public authorities in the development and implementation of the new legislation and local regulations on civil participation in accordance with CoE standards and best practices: the Drohobych city council has already adopted the Charter of the amalgamated community, and this week the Regulations on citizens’ engagement in public spaces’ development are going to be adopted, both documents developed with the support of the CoE project.
