In June and August, the GoEast team held discussions with 125 Donbas activists and conducted a needs assessment of the 80 public organizations in 17 towns of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.The initiative provides the support of the projects in the East through the reinforcement of the institutional and communicational capacity of the Donbas public sector, and, as a result, the creation of GoEast community consolidated by common values.
GoEast is an initiative of the Global Office NGO aimed at the development and support of public projects and communities in the East of Ukraine.
In the last three years, the public community of Donetsk and Luhansk regions has changed – the number of active public organizations that gradually switch from providing humanitarian aid to more continuous projects has increased. Nevertheless, they do not have a development strategy yet: for 36% of all respondents, this is not the main task for the near future. 45% of organizations require funding, 29% – personnel, 27% of public organizations representatives mention the need of quality communication and PR-strategies. And 15% of organizations are ready for networking, building up new partnerships, and cooperation in project development.
Today, the majority of public organizations in the East have a need of being independent of grants and to reinforce their work through social entrepreneurship. At the same time, a high percent of distrust of new projects, inefficiency and non-systematic nature of training programs, and a lack of qualified human resources are reported. GoEast is planning to help with establishing horizontal linkages and reinforce the organizations in accordance with their needs.
To develop an efficient program that will be really helpful to the public organizations in the East, we have decided to adhere to a principle of design thinking. The results of our study will serve as a basis for future projects and programs. We start with the individual work with organizations and plan to hold 5 events in different cities,
– explains Svitlana Kolodii, coordinator of GoEast initiative
NGO Global Office implements projects in the East of Ukraine since its inception.
In august 2016, UCMC was launched in Mariupol and Global Office team contributed a lot to the realization of this project. For the second year in a row, the team organizes GoCampEast engaging international volunteers – camps for children who live in the war zone. In summer 2017, international volunteers came to the schools of Donetsk and Luhansk regions to teach English to children and open a new culture for them. This summer, two large-scale Forums for around 300 university students (including displaced colleges and universities) who generated 30 project ideas for East development,
– notes Mustafa Nayyem, co-founder of Global Office, MP of Ukraine.
Footage of the presentation is available here.
Presentation of the project:
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