Support in developing key policy documents  on decentralization and  their public discussion

DESPRO provides on-going support to various activities focused on decentralization related reforms of public administration, reform of regional policy, etc. DESPRO experts are also involved in discussions on reforming of communal services provision.

The project has been providing further advisory, analytical, financial and other support in designing the concept paper on state regional policy development, i.e. the Concept of State Regional Policy that is in fact the fundamental document in the set of subsequent policy papers aimed at decentralization, which are:

• Concept of Administrative and Territorial Reform;
• Concept of Local Self-governance Reform
• Concept of Upgrading Of Public Servants` Training

The above policy documents are those policy development elements that compose the National Agenda on Decentralization.

In March, 2009 East Europe Foundation and  DESPRO, in a cooperation with MoRDC,  established grants for NGOs to implement the local projects of Administrative and Territorial  Reform  support in Sumska, Vinnitska, Ternopilska and Khersonska oblasts. The project is supposed to promote the reform on the local and regional level trough providing platform for different stakeholders to articulate their views as well as develop and discuss the new lay-out of the oblast after the reform. DESPRO is supporting these activities in two oblasts Vinnitska and Khersonska.

DESPRO is working in close partnership with the  Association of the Small Cities (ASC) that is part of the Association of Cities and Communities of Ukraine. Joint activities are focused promoting improvement of  services provision in small  cities trough improving communication promoting partnership of the local self-governance bodies and   regional administrations. Experts and practitioners involved by the Association have conducted 4 workshops in Vinnytska oblast and Crimea that involved 96 mayors of small cities. ASC has prepared the analytical materials about the current status of the small cities development in the previously defined regions, as well as proposals for state power structures, submitted to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, President of Ukraine, Verkhovna Rada. As a general output – the national and regional power structures are aware of the small cities problems and special way of development.

Self-mobilization of community members

Social mibilisation is a process of bringing together all relevant stakeholders to raise people;s awareness of and demand for a particular programme, to assist in the delivery of resources and services , and to strengthen community participation for sustainability and self-reliance. social mobilisation requires social and behavioural change in many levels of involvement - from individual to community to policy and legislative action.
 

Capacity building of project partners

DESPRO has been successfully implemented a consolidated demand driven capacity building plan, developed in 2008. According to this plan all project target groups such as administrations and local self-governance bodies, community leaders and activists were involved into the training programs.
Major capacity building topics for partners are: (a) governance, decentralization and services provision; (b) social mobilization and community participation; (c) local; community needs assessment; (d) project design and management; (e) financial management and accounting; (f) organizational and legal issues of NGO formation and management; (g) NGO self assessment, impact monitoring; (h) team and partnerships building; (i) mobilization of resources; (j) local development planning and instruments; (k) technical aspects of water supply projects implementation; (l) entrepreneurship;

Introduction and application of HRBA

SDC- COOF has developed a generic methodology for promoting HRBA throughout the activities of all SDC supported projects in Ukraine.
Based on it DESPRO team has developed training materials for DESPRO target groups aimed at developing the capacity of “duty bearers” and empowerment of “right holders”. The training materials contain the special chapter dealing with HRBA relations to water supply. This information was incorporated as a chapter in into the Manual “Decentralized models of water supply services provision’ the developed by DESPRO Decentralisation/Social Mobilisation fro project partners..  These training materials have been used in course of the training session on decentralisation during complex seminar held for the pre-selected CBOs and RWGs.
The above training materials were considered by the SDC-COOF NPO responsible for HRBA promotion.