On September 1, 2022, the implementation of the first year of the Agency for Private Initiative Development (ARPI) project "Promoting Youth Civic Participation in Decentralized Communitiess" began, which is a continuation of the projects "Heritage for Development" (2019 - 2020) and "Heritage for Development-2" (2020 - 2021), aimed at supporting local communities in the preservation and promotion of local heritage. The implementation of the projects was made possible thanks to grant support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Thanks to these projects, a number of changes were introduced to Ukraine’s strategic policy documents and the scope for Ukrainian CSOs to be involved in the preservation and management of cultural heritage was expanded. From 2019 to 2022, the network leaders prepared cultural and natural heritage interpretation plans for 18 communities from 13 regions of Ukraine, and also achieved significant progress in involving community residents in the preservation of local histories, antiquities, and even in the revitalization of “communal” castles and palaces.

At the same time, during the previous projects, some gaps in the competencies of community initiative group leaders became apparent: activists, especially young people, lack the ability to “press” key players in local development to implement creative projects to use the potential of heritage. Responding to this challenge, the Heritage Advocates project works towards ensuring effective public participation of young activists of Ukrainian AHs, enabling them to develop and implement modern solutions for interpreting the heritage of communities (on the one hand) and strengthening their experience and knowledge on issues of public participation, local democracy tools and planning advocacy campaigns around heritage resources (on the other).

The project team is convinced that both the process and the result of the activities of public activists on heritage preservation significantly raise the enthusiasm of communities and give residents confidence in the future. This is especially important in the context of the brutal aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which generates anxiety and uncertainty about the feasibility of any, even the most strategically important, actions at the local level. However, since the very beginning of the war, heritage has been and remains a determining factor in preserving Ukrainian identity. Often, intangible heritage (songs, traditions, ancestral work cultures, etc.) is a lifeline for those who were forced to leave their homes due to bombing, whose heritage sites were destroyed or significantly damaged by war. In addition, in this activity related to the preservation of heritage, in cultural and natural initiatives, we also see a powerful therapeutic effect from the horrors of war.

In view of this, for residents of Ukrainian communities within the project we held a competition with the symbolic name “Bold Dreams Competition for Communities of Ukraine” for the selection of initiatives towards the salvation of heritage, in order to encourage youth leaders to look at the situation with optimism, start planning and taking concrete steps to save cultural heritage and, at the same time, implement their own noble undertakings.

As a result of the competition, we selected 22 representatives of initiative groups from Ukrainian communities in 17 regions of Ukraine, including Vinnytsia, Volyn, Zhytomyr, Zaporizhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Luhansk, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Rivne, Sumy, Khmelnytskyi, Kherson, Chernihiv, Cherkasy Chernivtsi regions.

On April 5-8, 2023, participants will take part in the “Public Participation Campaign to Save the Cultural Heritage of Ukrainian Communities” camp in Ivano-Frankivsk region, where they will find like-minded people, improve their civic representation skills, and refine their own concepts for the preservation, promotion, and interpretation of local heritage.

After that, the project will provide grant support to 5 initiative groups, whose representatives will undergo training and submit full project application forms. They will compete for the implementation of individual projects aimed at uniting communities around heritage issues (including information and advocacy campaigns).

After the first year of the project, a National Forum of Small Community Heritage Ambassadors will be organized to promote successful participatory practices developed with the support of NED.