OSCE helps Ukraine’s civil society to improve access to public funding for social projects

More than 500 officials and civil society representatives from across Ukraine were trained on how state-funded social services can be delivered by non-governmental organizations, in a series of eight seminars organized by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine from May to July. The last workshop in the series, which took place in Poltava, ended on 12 July 2018. The others were held in Kyiv, Odesa, Vinnitsa, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Kramatorsk and Dnipro.

The Project Co-ordinator is supporting Ukrainian partners in contracting out social servicesto NGOs as a way of providing sustainable funding to the organizations and making the services more efficient and innovative. The approach was piloted with the outsourcing of palliative care in Kyiv and Cherkasy. The training seminars were intended to expand the practice to other social services and regions.

The participants included NGOs experienced in providing social services or aspiring to do so. Representatives of social policy and social protection departments at the regional, municipal and districts levels as well as regional territorial social services centres and respective units from amalgamated territorial communities also took part.

Civil society trainers, as well as speakers from the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights and the Kyiv City Administration, focused on international and national legislation in the field. They also discussed effective mechanisms of engaging civil society organizations in the delivery of state-funded social services. Practical exercises helped participants to improve their skills in conducting social procurement procedures, with due regard to risks of potential conflicts of interest, and in calculating the cost of services. Other topics covered good practices in accounting, reporting, monitoring and evaluation.