Last week, delegations from Regional Development Agencies of Khmelnytskyi and Sumy regions made a working visit to their colleagues – the Regional Development Agency of Odessa region.
During the meeting, they talked about cooperation, active development of intermunicipal partnership, and implementation of joint projects with communities of Odessa, Khmelnytskyi, and Sumy regions through grant opportunities and within the framework of the presidential initiative “Side by Side”.
“When planning this visit, we sought not only to show our colleagues from other regions our work and achievements, but also to discuss several interesting ideas and plan the implementation of joint projects that will benefit the communities and businesses of our regions. For example, we demonstrated to our colleagues the work of craft production enterprises in the Odessa region and at the same time jointly developed areas of interregional cooperation between craft producers,” noted Serhiy Kononenko, Director of the Regional Development Agency of the Odessa region.
It is worth adding that all three RDAs are pilot agencies of the UCORD Project, so part of the visit was devoted to exchanging experience in implementing grant agreements with the project, as well as discussing initiatives important for the regions that the agencies help implement within the framework of UCORD. In addition, we talked about the work on updating regional and local development strategies, which is currently underway in all regions of Ukraine and in which the RDAs are involved as proactive participants in the strategy-making process.
“I was impressed by the experience of the Odessa region in terms of leadership in the strategic planning process, the active involvement of almost 100% of communities in updating the regional development strategy and the action plan for its implementation. They were able to unite not only communities around the development of this document, but also a wide range of experts and the international community,” Kateryna Savchuk, director of the Regional Development Agency of Khmelnytskyi Oblast, shared her impressions.
According to Vitaliy Rastorguyev, director of the Regional Development Agency of Sumy Oblast, the idea of creating a common expert base for Regional Development Agencies was born during a trip to the Odessa region. Each RDA has experience and expertise in different areas, its own strengths, and can provide expert support to colleagues from other agencies. “By uniting into a single base of experts, we can be useful both to each other and to the entire network of Ukrainian RDAs,” he shared.
Also, as part of the visit, a project idea of economic education for students of grades 8-9 in Sumy, Odessa, and Khmelnytskyi regions. The process of preparing a grant application has even begun.
We are proud of the proactive position of our pilot agencies! And we are confident that their hard work will turn interesting ideas into important results for the regions! We remind you that the Swiss-Ukrainian project “Ukraine’s Cohesion and Regional Development”, UCORD, is implemented with the support of Switzerland via the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation by NIRAS Sweden AB and is the only project in Ukraine that provides comprehensive support to Regional Development Agencies and regional development reform.