What problem are you solving?:

This project stipulates to overcome the informational vacuum in Ukraine caused in coverage of activites of the local authorities during the financial and economic crisis, namely to create an efficient mechanism aimed at providing of transparent coverage of local government activities to the citizens.

Describe your idea:

On the basis of results of monitoring, questioning of local experts and journalists and focus-group researches (2009) we plan to conduct a series of meetings of dialogue groups aimed at organization of regular compilation of requests to local authorities from the representatives of social and demographic groups mostly suffered from the crisis. We plan to send these requests to local authorities regularly once a month, to analyze the responds and to disseminate this information through local media, Internet and also (at the second phase of project) at the official sites of local government bodies.
The short-term result: establishment of interaction between the authority, business, public and media aimed at settlement of key problems in 6 regions the target audience of which will be 6-8 million of citizens.
The long-term result: dissemination of the project in other regions of Ukraine the target audience of which will be 25-34 million of citizens.

What country will this operate in?: Ukraine

Who are you?:

Yuri Nesteryak – Ph.D., President of Association “Spilnyi Prostir” (ASP).
Oleksandr Chekmyshev – Ph.D., coordinator of monitoring projects, Head of Equal Access Committee (EAC).
As a consortium of organizations ASP/EAC has implemented 54 projects (public informational campaigns, media literacy; professional and ethical media standards; media monitoring, questioning, focus-groups researches).
Our donors: NED, Freedom House/USAID, Eurasia Foundation, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, MARTA program of the Government of the Netherlands, International Renaissance Foundation, NDI; PAS of the Embassy of the USA, OSCE, Council of Europe, European Commission.