The West-Ukraine Resource Centre announces a competition for the selection of amalgamated hromadas (AHs) to participate in the project "Participatory Budget as a Hromada Development Tool", which is being implemented with the support of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme, co-funded by the European Union and its member states Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Poland and Sweden.

Rural, settlement and urban amalgamated hromadas located in the Lviv, Volyn, Zakarpattya, Rivne, Ternopil, Zhytomyr Oblasts are invited to participate in the competition.

The aim of the project is to increase participation of the citizens of AHs in Western Ukraine in decision-making through the introduction of participatory budgets in these hromadas.

Within the framework of the competition, it is planned to select 6 AHs, where the participatory budgets will be introduced.

Winning AHs will receive:

• Expert advisory support for implementation of a participatory budget in the hromada;
• Opportunity for three AH representatives to undergo a two-day seminar on the methodology for the introduction of public participatory budgets;
• Free training for activists willing to submit their proposals for a project competition;
• Creation of an advertising video about the hromada that can be used to promote the AH;
• Package of methodological materials.

The assistance provided by the WURC will include a range of consulting, awareness-raising, educational and training activities aimed at increasing the hromada's ability to decide on where to spend a part of the local budget to improve the hromada life. It is expected that such a process will be formalised in the normative documents of the corresponding AHs.

Requirements to the participants of the competition:

• The applicant must fill in the application form of the established sample;
• The applicant must demonstrate willingness and readiness to fix a certain percentage of the AH budget for the implementation of hromada projects by submitting a joint application for participation in the competition signed by: the head of the AH, at least three members of the local council and two representatives of the active public (greater number of signatories strengthens the application);
• The applicant must ensure the readiness to mobilise the necessary number of local residents and council representatives to participate in the training events of the project in the case of selection of the relevant AH;
• The applicant must give prior consent to submit the issue of approval of the Provision on the participatory budget for consideration to the relevant council;
• The AH should have a website available for hosting a platform for online voting for the participation budget projects.

In the process of selection, the preference will be given to 6 AHs, which will indicate the most convincing arguments of importance of project implementation in the hromada, and point out whether the local self-government body is ready to allocate funds from the local budget for the implementation of the participatory budget.

To take part in the competition, the applicants have to fill in the questionnaire of the established sample (is in the supplement to this announcement), and send it with a scanned page with signatures (confirming the consent to participate in the project) to an e-mail office@zurc.org with the title "Participatory budget (indicate the name of the AH)" until 5PM on 30 March 2018.

Procedure for selecting participants:

At the first stage of consideration, within the first days after the deadline for filing applications, the submitted questionnaires are reviewed for compliance with the technical requirements.

At the second stage, a meeting of the expert commission is held, where the final decision on the definition of six AHs out of the project participants is made, as well as two or three reserve hromadas are chosen to replace some AHs in case of unforeseen circumstances or unfair fulfillment of obligations.

The participants will be notified about the competition results by an e-mail letter to the address, indicated in the application form, by 13 April 2018.

For additional questions, please contact office@zurc.org. Contact person: Ulyana Voloshynivska

Reference:

U-LEAD with Europe: Ukraine – Local Empowerment, Accountability and Development Programme is a multi-donor action of the European Union and its member countries Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The Programme contributes to the establishment of a multilevel governance that is transparent, accountable and responsive to the needs of the population.

In particular, such assistance is to enhance the ability of key stakeholders at the national, regional and local levels to implement regional policy and decentralisation reforms, as well as to improve the organisation of local administrative services delivery for the benefit of Ukrainian citizens.

Participatory budget is a democratic process that enables every citizen to participate in the distribution of local budgets through the creation of projects to improve the town/city and/or voting for them.

Any resident may submit a project related to the improvement of life in his/her settlement, participate in the competition, win in the voting and monitor how his/her project is implemented within the budget.

The public budget process forms citizens' trust in local authorities and promotes better understanding of the AH management process, creates an effective mechanism for the interaction of structural units of the local self-government bodies and hromada members in the budget process, as well as helps in identifying and solving problems the hromada residents are most concerned about. Besides, the implementation of the selected projects is carried out throughout the year, and the residents exercise direct control over this process.