The aim of this study was to analyze the particularities of functioning and the role in the hromada’s life of community-building centers established as part of the first wave of the Community reBuilding project.

Key goals of the study:

1. To describe the general principles of the functioning of community-building centers and the work of their teams.
2. To examine how community-building centers affect the engagement of different social groups in the hromada community and to discover how exactly hromada residents participate in the activities of community-building centers.
3. To clarify how the establishment of a community-building center has affected the hromada.

To meet these goals, 4 community-building centers were selected in 4 hromadas in order to show through their example how these spaces function a year after the implementation of the project.

Conclusions

In this study, we outlined the main principles of managing and operating community-building centers, their role in the lives of hromada residents, and the significance of these spaces both within the territorial boundaries of the hromada and beyond.

As a result of conversations with the study participants, we identified a number of aspects that are key to the functioning of community-building centers. These include a physical space that is convenient and adapted to people’s needs; sustainable funding and horizontal management that helps people feel the space is “theirs” while at the same time ensuring adherence to rules for shared use of the space; engaging people and building a community around the centers with efforts to make sure that all social groups take part in this community; using community-building centers not only as venues for events but also as spaces where people can communicate and support each other.

The findings of the study show that the functioning of community-building centers during the first year after the completion of the first wave of the Community reBuilding project was as follows.

Physical space

• Accessibility of community-building centers sets them apart positively from most other spaces in hromadas. Physical accessibility was one of the priorities during the implementation of the Community reBuilding project. As a result, the established centers are accessible for different groups of people, including parents with strollers, children, older people, and people with disabilities. At times, the teams of community-building centers faced challenges related to the inaccessibility of existing premises for people with limited mobility. To improve accessibility even under such constraints, they made decisions to install the necessary infrastructure. For example, an elevator was installed in buildings where the community-building center was located on the second floor.
• Location convenience also plays an important role in the functioning of community-building centers. Among the spaces we studied, some are located in the center of the settlement or near other places that people frequently visit. Such spaces include, in particular, education institutions and social protection offices. This helps attract more attention to community-building centers.
• The spaces of community-building centers are furnished with modern material and technical equipment, which allows the center’s team to organize various events and activities. These technical facilities, in particular, allow teenagers and young people to both study and organize various activities (for example, e-sports competitions).
• Having several rooms in one space allows the teams of community-building centers to simultaneously organize activities for different audiences so that groups of visitors can feel comfortable staying in the center.
• Community-building centers try to make the space around the center physically more accessible and visually more open for hromada residents. This allows residents to easily enter the space or use the area around it in a way that is comfortable for them.
• Community-building centers try to maintain a balance between physical accessibility, the openness of the area around the space, and people’s need for anonymity and privacy. This is achieved by zoning the territory, where there is both a more public and open part and, for example, an inner courtyard that is not visible from the street or neighboring plots.
• The territory around community-building centers is also improved through participation in other projects that resonate with the idea of the space. Active residents of the hromada are engaged in such initiatives, particularly at the stage of preparing grant applications.

Management and funding

• The teams of community-building centers mostly try to organize the management of the space on the principles of horizontal interaction. In particular, managers of community-building centers noted that they sought to involve hromada residents in initiating and implementing activities in the space. Thus, hromada residents participated in arranging the space and later became active users, taking part in or organizing various events. Some of these people have become part of the team and now hold regular activities in the space. Residents also sometimes initiate activities such as greening the area around the centers. Informants emphasized that the community itself is the foundation of the existence of community-building centers.
• The role of the teams of community-building centers is key for the managers we spoke with. The composition of the team and management approaches depend on funding, administrative needs, the size of the space, and the form of ownership. Typically, a community-building center team includes a managerial position, an administrative position, and a communication position.
• For some community-building centers, the main source of funding is allocations from the local budget. This can pose a challenge if the priorities of budget distribution change. Therefore, it is important for the teams of the spaces to take this into account and, if possible, diversify their funding sources.
• The lack of remuneration for the community-building center team can undermine the sustainability of their work: people are forced to combine their activities in the space with other jobs, which leads to excessive workload or resignation of staff members. At the same time, motivation and an understanding of the space’s value allow its team to continue working on the center’s development. This indicates that sustainable functioning of a community-building center requires not only motivated and value-driven people, but also predictable funding.
• In conditions of unstable funding, the teams of community-building centers employed various strategies to attract resources, in particular covering utility fees from the territorial hromada’s budget, allocating funds from the hromada budget for salaries, attracting grant funding, receiving support from local entrepreneurs, and organizing events on a commercial basis.

Activities and interaction with people

• Community-building centers are places for events and activities in various formats and for different audiences. In particular, they are prepared to engage members of all social groups regardless of the initial focus of the space on one target group.
• Community-building centers have become platforms for interaction between various social groups of hromada residents, where people with different life experiences can communicate informally, sharing both their difficulties and enjoyable events. As noted by participants in our study, these were often people who did not interact with one another outside the center’s space.
• The most active users and visitors of community-building centers are young people and women with children. Hromada residents have the opportunity to initiate an event by means of an informal oral request to the managers. At the same time, in the absence of a formal procedure for initiating an event, it is important that people are informed about how they can do this.
• Older people, particularly older men, as well as veterans and active military service members, visit community-building centers less frequently. In this regard, the center teams apply different strategies to engage less active hromada residents. These strategies include focusing on creating comfortable conditions during the planning and organization of events or activities. In particular, this involves arranging transport for older people and/or people with limited mobility, engaging veterans and military personnel through family activities, as well as personally inviting target audience members by phone calls. Despite the fact that attendance increases when transport or personal invitations are provided, these practices require systematization and integration into the daily work of community-building centers.
• Community-building center teams actively use social media to inform the public about the activities of their centers and to announce events and activities. At the same time, it is also important that community-building center teams consider people who do not use social media and spread information through other communication channels as well.
• Some community-building centers use various tools to collect feedback from visitors, including online tools. However, managers of community-building centers prefer feedback received in informal conversations with people. In this context, it is important to achieve a sustainable, clear, and convenient mechanism for different groups of people to provide feedback on the activities of the spaces.

Reflecting on the impact of community-building centers on the community, study participants noted that the establishment of these spaces has contributed to the cohesion of residents. In some hromadas, the center has become the key platform for interaction and communication among people. In addition, the emergence of this space has encouraged resident activity, motivating them to take part in community life. An example of such activity is, in particular, the foundation of a youth council on the basis of a community-building center, which united local youth and provided an opportunity to create projects for the benefit of the community. It is also important that community-building centers and the spaces around them have become examples of multifunctional non-commercial public spaces that are accessible to all hromada residents and operate on people-centered principles. These spaces are open not only during events but also at other times that are convenient for people, physically accessible to everyone, and managed according to a horizontal principle through the involvement of people interested in the space’s activities and the regular collection of feedback. Thus, other communities and hromadas can adopt the experience of creating such spaces.

We also compared the role of community-building centers, as observed in the findings of the study, with the initial idea the team had when creating the Community reBuilding project. We can conclude that community-building centers mostly perform the functions we hoped to achieve. Specifically, this refers to the following.

• Strengthening social ties and fostering cohesion among hromada residents. People with different life experiences, identities, and views interact with one another in the spaces of community-building centers. This helps people understand one another, share and discuss their experiences and perspectives, and support each other.

• Creating infrastructure for the development of civil society. Community-building centers become spaces where local initiatives emerge and grow. Later, these initiatives transform into the foundation for more sustainable activity—for example, local civil society organizations.
• Access to educational opportunities for different social groups. In community-building centers, residents of various ages and backgrounds obtain informal education on different topics and gain opportunities for professional retraining. This is especially important for people who have been forced to leave their homes due to the war and adapt to new communities, as well as for veterans in the process of returning to civilian life.
• Meeting the cultural needs of hromada residents. Cultural practices are among the activities that take place in community-building centers. Hromada residents participate in various artistic, theatrical, musical, athletic, and charitable events. This is especially relevant for hromadas which lack modern public spaces for holding events of this kind.
• Access to social services and support. Community-building centers are places where hromada residents can receive consultations, mental health assistance, as well as services related to social integration/reintegration and counseling.

However, we’ve also recorded the difficulties that community-building center teams face in their work. Most of these difficulties are critical and cannot be resolved by the teams alone. Therefore, in order for the community-building centers to continue performing these functions, they need support in several key aspects.

1. Achieving financial sustainability of community-building centers. It is necessary to support the ability of community-building centers to provide payment for their team’s work in order to maintain professional management of the spaces. It is also important for community-building centers to be able to cover operational costs, expenses for material and technical equipment, furnishing and maintenance of amenities, etc. After all, funding for such expenses is often difficult to include in grant projects.
2. Development of community-building center teams. Since the effectiveness of community-building centers depends on the management capacities of the team, their knowledge and skills, it is also necessary to support teams in developing their capacities. In particular, this concerns training center teams in methods of communicating about the space’s activities to attract a wider audience, strategies for engaging the least active community members, effective tools for mobilizing additional resources, as well as deepening skills in managing community-building center teams.
3. Security and energy resilience during the war. Many community-building centers do not have a bomb shelter or lack a properly equipped entrance to it, which forces some spaces to close and suspend all activities during air raid alerts. Therefore, community-building centers need support in creating or equipping civil defense shelters. It is also important to maintain the energy independence of these spaces in case of power outages caused by Russian shelling of Ukrainian infrastructure.