The second cycle of Cities4Cities Mentorship has begun: nine hromadas and a cluster of six hromadas will receive support under the Polaris Programme’s International Municipal Cooperation track. This time, the mentorship will run for a longer period and place greater emphasis on supporting specific projects.
“For the second cycle, we have extended the support from six to ten months and added guidance on developing concepts for specific projects. We are already seeing the results of the first cohort, and exactly what we hoped for is happening: the network and the flow of project ideas are continuing to grow. We designed the seminar programme so that graduates could share with the new participants how they achieved these results,” says Svitlana Blinova, Head of Cities4Cities.
The mentorship programme kicked off on 9 September with a two-day seminar in Ivano-Frankivsk, where the new participants exchanged experiences with programme graduates, worked with mentors, and met with representatives of international organisations. One of the key messages of the discussions was that partnerships should not be limited to one-way support for Ukraine.
"A win-win partnership can involve both developing broader relations between municipalities and cooperation in specific thematic areas. In recent years, Swedish municipalities have increasingly come to realise that our world is not entirely peaceful. And we see that Ukrainian hromadas, unfortunately, already have experience that may one day be useful to us as well", said Magnus Lilleström, Senior Adviser to the Polaris Programme, SALAR International.
The seminar also brought together representatives of the French organisation Stand with Ukraine, Germany’s Engagement Global, the URBACT programme, as well as the Interreg NEXT programmes Romania–Ukraine, Poland–Ukraine, and Hungary–Slovakia–Romania–Ukraine.
Edward Mayor, President of the NGO Stand with Ukraine, spoke about the MistoMatch initiative and stressed the importance of broader connections between municipalities: “When we build partnerships between Ukrainian and French municipalities, they happen at the level of mayors, but not only there. They also involve residents, local civil society organisations, businesses, universities, hospitals — many different people. As a result, more and more people in France are getting to know Ukrainians. It is these human connections that enable us to build long-term support for Ukraine.”
The new participants moved straight into practical work during the seminar: together with their mentors, they identified areas for cooperation and planned the next steps. They also worked specifically on presentation skills. During a workshop with media trainer Liuba Sorokina, they practised public speaking and learned how to focus their messages for international audiences.
Ivano-Frankivsk has considerable experience in implementing international projects, making the city one of the seminar’s practical reference points. Ihor Popadiuk, Director
of the Investment Department of the City Council, together with Deputy Mayor Sviatoslav Nykorovych and their team, shared their experience of running the project office and implementing international initiatives. Cooperation with the Swedish city of Luleå was highlighted as one example.
“Our partnership with Luleå shows how important it is not simply to establish an international contact, but to develop it systematically. The Polaris Programme and Cities4Cities help municipalities move to a new level of international cooperation by providing the knowledge, tools and support needed to progress from initial meetings to concrete joint results,” said Sviatoslav Nykorovych, Deputy Mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk.
Preparing hromadas for the opportunities and requirements associated with Ukraine’s accession to the EU is a priority for the Polaris Programme, and intermunicipal cooperation is a key instrument in this process. As part of Cities4Cities Mentorship, hromadas will also take part in international events focused on partnership development and European integration. The next of these will be the European Week of Regions and Cities in Brussels.
The main outcome the mentorship support aims to achieve is a shift from individual contacts and opportunities to systematic cooperation that contributes to the development of the hromada.
