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In March, residents of Rozhysche in Ukraine, managed to identify a bulrush fire with a drone provided by IOM, and stopped it with the help of local firefighters, while schoolchildren of the Tiachiv amalgamated territorial community started sorting waste with IOM-provided bins.

These are just some of the results of the project “Engage, Connect, Empower: Catalysing Youth Participation to Promote Cohesive and Resilient Communities”, funded by the British Embassy Kyiv and implemented by IOM in cooperation with the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine.

The project assists the youth from Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia regions, including displaced people, people with disabilities and members of veterans families, in running their environment protection and social initiatives.

A total of 370 community representatives (229 women and 141 men) from 16 communities took part in the project. Selected youth initiative groups went through training on project development, fundraising, participatory democracy, human rights, environmental protection, environmental communications, negotiation, and gender.

All the training sessions were conducted online due to the quarantine restrictions. Each of the communities, with the help of trainers, developed their own social project and awareness campaign on environmental protection. On top of that, each community received an in-kind grant equivalent to up to GBP 4,000 for implementing their own projects. Additionally, IOM conducted training sessions for participants on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and emergency response. Special attention was devoted to the usage of drones for monitoring, prevention, and response purposes.

Representatives of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine were involved in each training. In total, more than 200 people took part in the DRR training component, of which 128 were women and 78 men.

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