Throughout November and December, seven regional Resilience Conferences will be held in various cities across Ukraine, organised by civil society organisations that are grant recipients of the Impulse project. Each event will bring together local and regional organisations, experts and community members to discuss current challenges and present practices that are already working in different regions.
The conferences are designed to help residents of frontline communities jointly identify key challenges, exchange practical solutions, develop regional approaches to early and sustainable recovery, and strengthen partnerships that can be transformed into long-term development programmes. These are platforms where local teams can not only present their experiences, but also find new forms of interaction that will strengthen the resilience of their communities during the war and after victory.
The resilience conferences will be held as part of the project ‘Impulse: Empowering Civil Society for Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine,’ implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation and the Eastern Europe Foundation with funding from Norway (Norad) and Sweden (Sida).
Upcoming events
28 November, Kyiv
Civil Society Forum “Donetsk Region 2025: A Look into the Future”
Organiser: Association “Revival and Development”
Participants will discuss long-term models of security and sustainability for communities in the Donetsk region in the context of full-scale war.
29–30 November, Poltava
Sustainability Conference ‘Synergy of Sumy Region Youth’
Organiser: League of Change NGO
Focus: strengthening the role of youth in community recovery and the formation of regional partnerships.
9 December, Chernihiv
‘Sustainable Chernihiv Region: Recovery through Partnership’
Organiser: Dobrochin NGO
The event will bring together representatives of government, education, business and civil society organisations to coordinate regional recovery decisions.
10 December, Kryvyi Rih
‘Restoring water security – the foundation of community sustainability’
Organiser: Public Association ‘Stop Poisoning Kryvyi Rih’
The discussion will focus on problems of access to safe water and environmental risks in industrial areas of the Kryvyi Rih region.
12 December, Zaporizhzhia
Interregional Sustainability Conference ‘Unbreakable South-East’
Organiser: Ecocense NGO
Representatives from the Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions will participate to present joint regional solutions.
16 December, Kyiv
Sustainability conference for the community of people from Luhansk region
Organiser: NGO ‘Luhansk Region Public Initiative’
The discussion will focus on strengthening capacity and mutual assistance among communities that have lost their homes due to the war.
March 2026, Odesa
Organiser: Ukrainian Institute of International Politics
Events and registration for them will be announced on the websites of the organisers of the Sustainability Conferences and the International Renaissance Foundation.
Why are sustainability conferences important?
Sustainability conferences are a series of national and regional events that the International Renaissance Foundation launched in 2025 as a permanent platform for discussing the strategic vision for community recovery during wartime. Their concept is based on the need to bring together activists, analysts, local authorities and donors to agree on approaches to sustainability – people’s participation in decision-making, identity formation, human capital development and the economic capacity of communities most affected by the war.
The conferences feature panel discussions, debates, presentations of research and practical cases that demonstrate how CSOs and communities are building their own models of sustainability. The format of the events provides an opportunity to assess the interaction between civil society and local authorities, identify solutions that work, and strengthen partnerships that influence the long-term trajectories of Ukraine’s recovery. The International Renaissance Foundation, together with its partners, provides a substantive framework and support for the events.
Read the summary materials of the Sustainability Conference 2.0, which took place in September 2025, at the link.
