The Regional Office of U-LEAD in the Ternopil Oblast held an experience exchange event for heads and officials of local municipalities. The event aimed to present and discuss effective practices of the municipalities of the Ternopil U-LEAD.
Nataliia Onyshchuk, Head of the Regional Office, stressed the importance of project activities in the work of local self-government bodies. According to her, project management has long become an effective tool that enables attracting new resources for the implementation of various projects in municipalities:
“Our task is to present and discuss the achievements of municipalities of the Ternopil Oblast in project activities. It is important for us that as many employees who are responsible for the economic development of municipalities and attracting investments as possible are able to use this tool. Furthermore, anyone can master project management and actively apply it in their work.”
Nataliia Onyshchuk spoke about the general support of U-LEAD, which has been provided to the municipalities of Ukraine and the Ternopil Oblast in particular for a while now. The participants of the event were introduced to the main work formats offered by U-LEAD. They also discussed the work of the project office in the municipality, its operation format, personnel, legal framework for its establishment and other aspects.
Officials of the Velyka Berezovytsia and Skoryky municipalities shared their experience and achievements in project management.
Oksana Zazuliak, Head of the Economic Development, Investments and Public Procurement Department of the Velyka Berezovytsia Settlement Council, spoke about the projects they had managed to implement with grant funds. She reaffirmed that project management helped Velyka Berezovytsia implement a number of initiatives designed to strengthen local businesses and the investment capacity of the municipality and attract funds from international partners for the implementation of large-scale projects:
“We are actively cooperating with U-LEAD and have already made certain gains both in the educational component and in project activities. We implemented the “Business-Friendly Municipality” project that allowed us to set up a Business Support Centre, develop an investment profile of our municipality and come up with a project for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. Our youth and entrepreneurs have been offered a number of business management courses. This is an important project that gave us an insight into working with businesses and raising our investment attractiveness.”
Olha Rudkovska, Head of the Economic Development and Investment Attraction Department of the Skoryky Village Council, shared her first steps and achievements in project activities. The speaker stressed the importance of the training that U-LEAD and other partners offer for local self-government specialists, helping them to master a new direction and independently apply project management skills already in practice.
The meeting highlighted the option of developing cooperation between local self-government bodies and the public sector in project activities. A relevant practical case was presented by Serhii Volokhatyi, Head of the Educational Analytical Centre for Municipal Development NGO.
According to him, NGOs can be a reliable partner for local self-government bodies in the preparation of grant applications. He underlined the paramount importance of developing these partnerships, as NGOs can participate in a number of international programmes that can be useful for the municipalities of the Ternopil Oblast.
