Lviv continues to share its experience with communities and help Ukrainian cities find partners around the world. Only in the last six months, thanks to the Cities 4 Cities | initiative United 4 Ukraine managed to establish about 40 municipal partnerships between Ukraine and Poland, Germany, France, and Sweden.
The day before, representatives of 12 Ukrainian communities visited Lviv to learn from the city’s experience and develop municipal partnerships with European cities. Andriy Sadovy presented the UNBROKEN ecosystem of support and care for people to the guests and told how they work with international partners in Lviv on the example of building this ecosystem. They also talked about how to effectively communicate about international projects, how to implement successful projects and find funds for them, the possibilities and mechanisms of international financial assistance. They also discussed how Lviv works with partner cities (now Lviv already has 21 partner cities in different countries of the world).
“From the first days of the full-scale invasion, we understood that cooperation with European communities was key. For example, partner cities such as Wroclaw, Freiburg, Vilnius, Cannes, Würzburg are helping Lviv with the development of the UNBROKEN ecosystem. Instead, European cities value Ukraine’s experience in how to manage a community in wartime and work effectively. Therefore, we teach Ukrainian communities how to establish cooperation with international partners: we organize exchanges of experience, forums, study trips. Over the past six months, we have managed to establish 40 partnerships between the cities of Ukraine and Poland, Germany, France, and Sweden,” says Svitlana Kryzhanivska-Blinova, coordinator of the Cities 4 Cities | United 4 Ukraine.
Now they plan to extend this project for 5 years, because it is very timely, say the initiators.
“We have created a site for communities – the so-called business card of the Ukrainian community – what is its strength, why does an international partner need to be friends with a particular community. In fact, this is the only platform about Ukrainian communities in the world. That’s why we invite communities to get involved,” adds Svitlana Kryzhanivska-Blinova.
In particular, to start the search for a partner community, you need to contact the organizers: https://cities4cities.eu/
Cities 4 Cities initiative United 4 Ukraine was launched to help Ukrainian and EU communities to start and develop long-term partnerships. It was initiated by the Institute of the City in Lviv (Ukraine) together with SALAR International and the city of Sindelfinden (Germany), with the support of the Swedish International Development Agency Sida. The strategic partners of the initiative are the Association of Cities of Ukraine and the All-Ukrainian Association of OTG.