The fifth meeting of working groups on public safety and recovery (the WGPSR) was held in the Stanislav, Bilozerka, Chornobaivka, Kochubeivka, Visokopillia, and Novovorontsovka communities.
About 100 participants took part in the 6 meetings, including heads and representatives of military administrations, village and settlement councils, elders, the police, the State Emergency Service, communal institutions, public organizations and foundations operating on the territory of communities, educational institutions, medicine, civil-military cooperation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, UNDP.
The main discussion topics are the needs and development of potential projects that can strengthen public safety in communities.
Among the needs are electronic warfare and detectors of enemy drones for police officers, emergency services, and institutions that carry out their work in front-line areas, restoration of the video surveillance system in some settlements, drones for surveying territories and search operations, arranging workplaces for community police officers, creating security classes and conducting safety training for the public, installing road signs, indicators and devices for forced reduction (limitation) of vehicle speed, increasing the number of the public warning system, etc.
Although some of the communities where the WGPSR operates are under constant danger not only from barrel artillery shelling but also from Fpv drones, there are many ideas in the direction of social cohesion. There is great demand in communities for the restoration and maintenance of social ties.
Among the needs in this direction were the ideas of arranging safe hubs and spaces for working with young people, psychosocial support for children and teenagers, sports, playgrounds, and park areas, and popularizing Ukrainian and local identity through various approaches in settlements more distant from the line of hostilities.
Some of these ideas will be soon implemented in communities.
Our Foundation is also starting to work with the WGPSR on preparing recommendations regarding the informational component of the activities of local self-government bodies in the front-line areas and communication with the population in conditions when it is not possible to talk about everything, but it is also necessary to somehow position ourselves as a community in the information space.
During the last six months of our work with the WGPSR, with the support of UNDP and in cooperation with military administrations, several public safety projects have already been implemented in the communities: a working office for the police has been created, new fire hydrants and video surveillance cameras have been installed, security classes have been created, the opening of two safe public spaces is prepared.
All participants of the WGPSR are indomitable people who work every day in conditions of great risk for the restoration of their communities on the ground.
We invite you to join these indomitable people, the meetings of the WGPSR in communities if the topic of strengthening public security is relevant to you. The next meetings will be held in two months.
As a reminder, the WGPSR in the 6 mentioned communities was created from July to August 2023 by the orders of the heads of military administrations within the framework of the initiative "Kherson Region: Public Security and Recovery in the Conditions of Change" is implemented by the "Union" Foundation with the assistance of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Ukraine with the financial support of the Government of Denmark, provided within the framework of the United Nations Program for Reconstruction and Peacebuilding.
Eleven international partners support the program: the European Union (EU), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the US Embassy in Ukraine, and the governments of Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, and Japan.