On the initiative of MinRehion, the first Office for Cohesion Policy is to be established in Ivano-Frankivsk. Minister for Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Vitalii Bezgin announced this during the Carpathian Summit. It will serve as a platform to train project managers who will help communities develop and implement investment projects. Here, the MinRehion’s initiative to train 1,000 project managers for communities will be launched.

‘Nowadays, communities have access to many European programmes and funding opportunities. However, there is a lot of work involved between a good idea and a completed project. We need specialists who can complete the entire process: identify the community’s needs, draw up a concept and budget, make the necessary procurements, and organise implementation and reporting. Our aim is to train 1,000 project managers who will possess these skills and be able to work directly in the interests of communities,’ said Vitalii Bezgin, Minister for Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons of Ukraine.

The training will be based on practical work. Community representatives will come with their own real-life projects and, over the course of five days, will work with experts to develop them.

After completing the training, the communities will not be left to manage their projects on their own. Further mentoring and technical support is planned: expert consultations, assistance with preparing applications, revising projects and building a regional portfolio of investment projects.

In this way, the Office will help communities navigate all the practical stages of project preparation and increase the project’s chances of attracting funding and being implemented.

The first Office for Cohesion Policy will open in Ivano-Frankivsk. Ihor Popadiuk will be the programme manager for the initiative – a specialist well-known in local self-government circles with extensive practical experience in project and regional work. Ivano-Frankivsk has experience in implementing international projects, an established project team and completed facilities that can be used as practical case studies during training.

The work of the Office will also enable the systematic collection of issues that communities face during the preparation and implementation of projects. MinRehion will use this experience to improve state instruments to support communities and regional policy.

The aim of the initiative is to establish a system in which communities will have their own trained specialists, access to expertise and support for the development of high-quality investment projects.