Civitta | Piloting the Megacommunity Approach

The background:

USAID AGRO aims to accelerate the economic development of rural Ukrainian communities by improving the governance of the agricultural sector. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the country face low competitiveness due to the lack of cooperation among entities to address common challenges. The project’s goal was to select several pilot territories to solve this problem and facilitate the economic development of rural communities in Ukraine.

Aim of the project:

The Megacommunity approach is a special way to boost local development in Ukraine. It brings together different communities and businesses in specific areas to work together. This helps everyone to create greater economic opportunities for all parties involved and grow their local economies.

Given the context of post-war recovery, cooperation approaches are crucial for effective recovery and development processes. That’s why piloting the Megacommunity approach and understanding its advantages, disadvantages, algorithms, and bottlenecks will enable the scaling of best practices and boost local economic recovery and development through effective collaboration.

The project team, consisting of Civitta, EasyBusiness, and Berman Group, conducted several educational events for community representatives. These events included online training in field research, online courses on local economic development, offline project development training, and a study tour to Slovakia and the Czech Republic to explore the experiences of local governments, associations, craft producers, and other local market players in effective cooperation that promotes local economic growth.

Services provided:

Verification that the Megacommunities concept works in Ukraine.[RB1]
Creation of three potential Megacommunities.
Supporting these communities in developing collaborative local economic development programs that extend beyond the core municipal territory.
Initiating a collaborative network covering two larger municipalities with common interests in sheep breeding.
Fostering public and private collaboration in successful municipalities at different levels of maturity.
Verifying and updating the process, criteria, and preliminary requirements for identifying potential Megacommunities.
Highlighting the most critical issues to focus on when supporting and facilitating the development of Megacommunities.
Promoting the concept and its advantages to a broad audience in Ukraine.

Project result:

The most significant product of the project is a roadmap for sheep breeding development in the Carpathian region. We provided a comprehensive description of the current state of the sheep breeding ecosystem in the region and offered specific recommendations for projects that should be implemented to develop the industry.

Piloting the Megacommunity Approach

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Aim of the project:

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Project result:

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