The Centre of United Actions helps territorial communities to engage citizens in decision-making

01 February 2023
The Centre of United Actions helps territorial communities to engage citizens in decision-making
Home > Uncategorized > The Centre of United Actions helps territorial communities to engage citizens in decision-making

As a part of its cooperation with territorial communities, analysts of the Centre of United Actions are helping local governments to introduce the full policy cycle. The cycle, among other things, requires a stage of working with data. One of the ways to obtain the data is to conduct surveys targeting community members and stakeholder groups. 

The authorities have to understand the needs of the citizens and take them into account while making decisions. Surveys allow local self-governance bodies to get information that cannot be obtained from quantitative indicators: why community members do not use particular services or whether they are ready for particular changes, etc. 

In the course of our work, we conducted surveys in the following communities:  

  • In the Lubeshiv community, Volyn, we asked locals about how often they visit cultural establishments, what events they attend and why. It helped to find out that events organized in the community do not fulfill the needs of its members. 
  • In the Buchach community, Ternopil oblast, the survey helped to discover that local inhabitants are ready to pay for cultural services if these services are interesting to them. 
  • In the Velyka Dymerka community, Kyiv oblast, thanks to the survey we found out that most locals are ready to sort waste and thus their local council can offer members of its community more modern approaches to waste management. 
  • In the Rozhyshche community, Volyn, we also cooperate on the issue of waste management. We discovered that locals need centralized waste pickup services and are ready to sort some types of waste. 

Currently, we helped to launch surveys for the benefit of local governments in two more communities in Lviv oblast that we started our cooperation with in the summer of 2022. 

In the Mykolaiv community, we are working on healthcare so that its members could receive medical services of high quality. Currently, surveys targeting local inhabitants and medical staff are conducted. We collect information to discover the strong sides and shortcomings of the healthcare system of the community, the level of corruption (presents and charges for services that are supposed to be free), the convenience of medical establishments’ location, specifics of treatment of non-ambulatory patients, and many other issues. 

In the Sokal community, we are working on education to help the city council to organize educational services of high quality. There we conduct surveys targeting local councilors, teachers, parents, and pupils of establishments of secondary education. Opinions shared by these groups will allow us to better understand the causes of the problems and ways to deal with them.