From August to December 2016, 15 independent experts conducted the monitoring on the effectiveness of the distribution of 7 million UAH provided by the government to the Ukrainian public organizations for the implementation of state youth policy in Ukraine. The experts visited 59 events organized by 17 NGOs among the winners. Experts also interviewed 1000 participants. This was discussed during a briefing held in UCMC on January 13, 2017.
From August to December 2016, 15 independent experts conducted the monitoring on the effectiveness of the distribution of 7 million UAH provided by the government to the Ukrainian public organizations for the implementation of state youth policy in Ukraine. The experts visited 59 events organized by 17 NGOs among the winners. Experts also interviewed 1000 participants. This was discussed during a briefing held in UCMC on January 13, 2017.
Monitoring results show that most of the public organizations are seeking to help young people to have their civic position. 29 organizations have won on the first direction – the civic position’s formation and national-patriotic education of youth; 5 projects in the field of popularizing and promoting healthy and safe lifestyles and health culture among young people; 3 projects were about creating conditions for employment of young people; 4 – providing partner support to young people who live in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine and internally displaced persons; 2 – provision of international youth cooperation.
Oleg Slabospytsky, coordinator of the Euromaidan Public Sector told about the principles which the monitoring was proceeded on, “The first one is independence. It was conducted by the public activists, and the Ministry was only a project partner. The second one is impartiality. Monitoring was conducted by the activists who didn’t take up top positions in organizations that had won the project contest. The third one is a projects’ contents. The main attention was paid to the contents and scoping of events, not their financial part.”
Young people themselves often learn about the events organized by NGOs at public expense on the Internet and from friends. Almost 90% said that they were easy to become participants. Almost the same number of them joined for the first time. The majority participants estimated the events as interesting and informative. Over 90% of respondents said that the event corresponded to their needs and that they were satisfied with the preparation work done for the event. Among the respondents, there were equal numbers of men and women. 50% of them were young people aged 18-25 and 33% – aged 26-39, most of them employed as well as are students, and only 10% were pupils. 80% live in the city, 20% in villages.
Irina Beliaeva, Director of the Department on Youth Policy of the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine, told about the changes that the ministry has been planning to implement the recommendations provided after the monitoring, “This is the first truly independent monitoring. After that we realized what is needed to be worked out. In particular, future ministry is planning to have such monitoring practice every year. In addition, to increase the number of applicants and facilitate their access to the competition, one of the next steps will be to develop an Internet portal for applying for online competition.”
New transparent procedures, such as involvement of the public to the tender committee and direct online broadcast sessions of the commission, along with the subsequent monitoring can be an example for imitations in other government structures. As for the citizens, it is an opened opportunity to control the distribution of taxes.
As Oleksandr Smirnov, the head of the “Ensuring transparency support system activities of NGOs to implement state youth policy in Ukraine” project, said, it was the first monitor that was “outbound” – monitors visited events in regions and saw the situation “on the ground”, and not in paper reports. Besides, Smirnov stated that monitoring will amend legislation to facilitate deregulation and simplification of civil society interaction with public authorities.
Roma Program Initiative Director at the International Renaissance Foundation Olga Zhmurko said, “Supporting reforms is a priority for the Foundation. In particular, it is about combating corruption, so the effective transformation of the country will become possible. The project has showed that: 1) there is a synergy between the authorities and civil society institutions; 2) The Ministry initiated reforms within the institution and declared a desire to make their work transparent and to control effectively the quality of the projects financed by taxpayers, i.e. the citizens of Ukraine; 3) effective models and practices should be enshrined and institutionalized in order to make the systematic improvement of the state policy possible. Therefore, the Foundation is planning to continue to support such a monitoring.”
