Community Dialogues – The Power of Community Building

Meeting with mature community leaders from different sectors to explore their communities in a multidisciplinary format. During the project, the leader(s) explored the issues of value, sustainability, vulnerability of communities and community building in Ukraine, as well as the impact of communities on the building of our common tomorrow.

Relevance

Communities today are the basis of society's sustainability. At the same time, they are an efficient form of communication and interaction. The project of the “Cultural and Educational Foundation MC6” NGO has an objective to bring together leaders of sustainable communities for the sake of awareness and building a new role of communities in extreme conditions. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine, the number of communities in Ukraine has been growing. Each community has its own experiences and background. Often, communities are not aware of each other's existence, although they share a purpose and common values. The MC6 team sees this as a threat to joint movement and development because there are few platforms for exchange of experience and communication for such communities. A clear position that communities are the most relevant driving force for change in modern society, a multidisciplinary approach to work and the MC6 residence space contributed to the comprehension of community powers, a sense of support and the ability to act together through competent leadership, networking, and creativity.

So what?

The project aims to bring together leaders of sustainable communities to network and strengthen the role of communities in Ukrainian civil society. The project stimulated the creation of a platform for the development of expertise, unification and interaction of leaders, and community members.

Focus Areas

• community
• cooperative effort
• non-formal education
• rebuilding.
• networking

Who For And With?

Many leaders of sustainable communities, along with facilitators and the MS6 team, had three days to share their experiences, expertise, and plans about the role of community in Ukraine’s present and tomorrow.

Participants

• Bohdan Lohvynenko, Ukraïner
• Valerii Pekar, Coalition of Business Communities for the Modernization of Ukraine, EMS
• Yelena Pidopryhora, Board Odesa
• Illya Zabolotny, Ukrainian Emergency Arts Fund
• Iryna Polikarchuk, Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture
• Iryna Solovey, Garage Gang
• Maksym Zalevsky, Global Ecovillage Network
• Marta Benyshyn, Building Ukraine Together
• Marianna Yeleiko, Hawrylyshyn Family Foundation
• Khrystyna Boyko, Daryna Shutiak, Iryna Shymon, ЗMIN Foundation
• Khrystyna Rutar, Cultural Studies of UCU, ЗMIN
• Yaroslav Yakovenko, School of New Thinking
• Olesya Zdorovetska, Ukrainian-Irish Cultural Platform
• Olya Sukha, Eduard Pastukh, MC6

Facilitation – Kateryna Kravchuk, Anna Karnaukh, Lanka

Changes launched by the project

• increased expertise of community leaders
• opportunity for non-formal learning
• mutual networking between communities
• stimulating the roadmap development about communities in Ukraine

The project is implemented by the Cultural and Educational Foundation MC6 NGO with the financial support from ЗMIN through the Grant Program 2023