On November 25-26, 2024, the second Intermunicipal Partnership Forum, an annual Cities4Cities United4Ukraine partner network event, was held in Lviv. It was part of the activities of the NGO Prosvita Institute and supported by the USAID UCBI project: Ukraine Confidence Building Initiative
The event brought together more than 140 participants from six countries, including representatives of Ukrainian communities, diplomats, international partners, and donors.
Representatives of the Kherson community, particularly the head of the "Union" Foundation, Yuriy Antoshchuk, also joined the important conversation about cooperation between the communities of Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States at the local, national, and international levels.
Speakers and participants shared practical ideas and experiences, focusing on opportunities for creating partnerships between Ukrainian communities and cities in other countries.
The Head of the "Union" Foundation, Yuriy Antoshchuk, had the opportunity to talk with our partners - UCBI and Benjamin Long, Country Representative for USAID/OTI in Ukraine, who support us and the Kherson region during this difficult time.
The United States' support for Ukraine is critical, and for this support to be as effective and strong as possible, it is necessary to know the local context.
Therefore, we talked about frontline communities of the Kherson region, which were occupied, then liberated, and which have been suffering from enemy shelling for two years but are living and moving towards strengthening public security and restoration; how the occupiers hunt civilians from drones; the challenges that volunteers, the State Emergency Service, the police, local administrations face, but still continue to work; conflicts that arise between people, between the public and the authorities, which are challenging to work on due to various circumstances.
The Forum's goal was to promote the idea of an inter-municipal partnership between municipalities in Ukraine and the EU by exchanging best practices, strengthening cooperation, opening opportunities, and coordinating efforts between national, international, and local players to accelerate the recovery from the Russian war and Ukraine's European integration at the regional level.