On the Europe Day, the all-Ukrainian information campaign "I Am Hromada!", organised jointly by MinRegion and the U-LEAD with Europe Programme, visited the residents of the Lozovatka village of the Kryvy Rih Rayon, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

Residents of Lozuvatka and neighbouring settlements, healthcare, education, environment and sports experts, local authorities, journalists, decentralisation advisers of the Dnipropetrovsk Local Government Development Centre, established by MinRegion and the U-LEAD with Europe Programme, were invited to the public event.

"This campaign is aimed at raising awareness of the population of those settlements, rayons that have no voluntary amalgamation, of the nature of the reform, its benefits, opportunities lost by non-amalgamated settlements in terms of public subventions, and additional benefits which their leaders, who do not want to unite, dissuade from. That is, the campaign is designed for people to push from below with a critical mass, so that AHs were formed. The specifics of the Kryvyi Rih Rayon are that it is already surrounded on all sides by AHs, including the successful ones, but it strongly resists amalgamation. It is neither worse nor better, it can also have very successful hromadas, but there is a reluctance of a certain part of the village heads to lose their powers, their influence on the ground and pass them on to higher levels,” said Yevhen Dukhovych, reform communication adviser of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme.

Serhiy Nahaychenko, head of the Kryvy Rih Rayon State Administration, recognised the work of Olena Tertyshna, director of the Dnipropetrovsk LGDC, who persistently and purposefully strives to bring about change in amalgamated hromadas in the rayon under his authority.

Presenting the youth team, Olena Tertyshna noted that these are young people who live and work in hromadas and who have never regretted that their parents agreed to amalgamation. Each of them told about the achievements of their AHs.

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