Rural Councils Find Solutions for Local Problems
Until recently, single mother Oksana Moskalyuk had to choose between finding a job outside of her village of Gostiv or staying home to care for her four-year-old, Alina.
Gostiv, an agricultural village of just over 1,000 people in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, has few employment opportunities. Young parents like Oksana are forced to search for work outside of their hometowns, leaving their preschool-aged children with neighbors or aging grandparents. Some parents, like Zinaida Nanovska, a village teacher, have been forced to take their kids to work, since there is no one to take care of them at home.
When school begins this year, however, Oksana and Zinaida won’t be faced with this difficult choice. The Gostiv Village Council — one of over 500 rural councils participating in the Eurasia Foundation’s (EF) Strengthening Rural Councils initiative—in cooperation with a public board of community representatives, turned a vacant building in the village into the Dzvinochok Preschool. As part of the Strengthening Rural Councils project, EF helped the Gostiv Village Council identify the community’s most pressing needs and to use their own resources to meet those needs.
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Children play in the Dzvinochok Preschool playground
Photo Credit: Olena Sayenko |
EF supported Gostiv through a grant to the Lviv-based Western Ukrainian Resource Center (WURC). The WURC helped rural council members in Gostiv and four other villages work with their communities to address local social and economic issues. Using the tools and knowledge they acquired through the EF-sponsored program, rural councils worked with their communities to raise money, write development plans and take other concrete steps to provide or improve the municipal services community members said they needed most. In the village of Starunya, they rebuilt a hospital and started to serve meals in public schools free of charge. The Toporivtsi village council worked with the community to establish a credit union and set up telephone lines in the village. In the remote village of Troitsya, money was raised to purchase a minibus, offering its residents—many of whom work in the district center 28 kilometers away public transportation for the first time. In addition to opening the preschool, the Gostiv community also raised funds to open a local museum and provide gas-powered heating to the village.
While the Ukrainian government declared 2006 the Year of the Village, the Eurasia Foundation has supported local village development since 2004. USAID’s EF programs have helped 545 village councils in eight oblasts (Lviv, IvanoFrankivsk, Zakarpatska, Crimea, Volyn, Kirovohrad, Khmelnytsky and Cherkasy) act in the interests of their constituents and improve municipal services. The local improvements USAID has helped to develop include: village streetlights, a school heating system, a playground, a stadium, a new recreation area and bus stops. More than 1,300 council members have attended trainings on topics ranging from strategic planning, public finance and project management to fundraising, information technology and energy savings. Twenty eight rural councils have developed and adopted strategic local development plans. When community leaders listen to and work with their constituents effectively, they can take steps toward local development with concrete results for their communities.
The publicly managed Dzvinochok Pre-school in Gostiv is an example of the benefit that comes from local leaders and community members working together. The cooperation helps young parents like Oksana and Zinaida not to worry about their children while at work. Now that the preschool has opened, Zinaida’s daughter will finally get the chance to spend time with children of her own age. And Zinaida can look forward to the day when her daughter is old enough to go to school together with her.
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