Political Group Project
Our group which consists of 6 enthusiastic experts from Moldova, Russia and Ukraine created a platform where we publish (1) clear and concise instructions explaining how to solve various problems in the cities and (2) successful stories/cases of Ukrainian activists who already initiated changes in their cities. The main idea of the project is to encourage civic participation of citizens in Ukraine (and later in the Republic of Moldova) at regional and local levels. Active citizens who want to make difference in their communities will have easy access to our website which will help them to actively engage in various civic activities and to change their quality of life. Our project will inspire future active citizens and help the existing citizens to make differences in their communities.
The web resource is designed mainly for activists with social work experience, who want to share their experience with the public. Prospective activists and future leaders will also benefit from the resource, where they will be able to find clear instructions explaining how to solve various problems in the cities. The active citizens can also be inspired by our success stories.
Background:
Civic activism is considered to be one of the biggest challenges for Eastern European countries in the post-Soviet era. In the Soviet Union, the state was “the owner.” Therefore, citizens, who were used to the concept that “state is responsible”, were not engaged in the decision-making processes.
Nowadays, when civil societies are developing in a number of the post-Soviet countries, civic engagement has a tendency to become more and more popular, especially after some failures of politicians who tried to manage the system. Citizens start organising themselves in order to solve common problems, specifically those related to a small area (i.e. streets, roads.) This also includes mobilisation of citizens to influence the way the Local Public Administration (LPA) performs its duties and implements the decision-making process.
According to the research conducted by our group in November-December 2016, the main problem is citizens’ lack of knowledge regarding the civic engagement process in which they can get involved, and their poor awareness of legal aspects.