Organizational development

Changing the Director

In September, Yegor Stadny left the position of the director of CEDOS and was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Education and Science. We thank Yegor for his 1.5 years of working as our director, and for 7 years of dedicated and unforgettable cooperation in various CEDOS projects.

At the request of the organization’s team, the Supervisory Board appointed Ivan Verbytsky as the director; before, he was the coordinator of CEDOS’s urban projects. The director’s term of service is 2 years — that is, until September 2021.

This was the fourth time that we changed our director in the past 6 years. We are proud that our organization does not depend on one leader, but is institutionalized and knows how to get through a change in leadership effectively.

Renewing the Supervisory Board

In May 2019, we elected the members of our Supervisory Board for another two-year term. Olesia Ostrovska, Natalka Humeniuk, Ivan Prymachenko and Tymofiy Brik, to whom we are grateful for their work in the previous Board, were joined by the American researcher Jennifer Murtazashvili. Jennifer is a professor and director of the International Development Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research focuses on governance, public administration and development in Eurasia. Jennifer is also the author of the book Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan, which was chosen as the best social science book by the Central Eurasian Studies Society.

Team Development

By the end of 2019, in addition to the director and the accountant, CEDOS project teams involved 10 analysts and project managers, as well as communication and logistics specialists.

This year, members of our project teams took further education courses in quantitative and qualitative social science methods and data visualization, specially designed to match the organization’s goals.

We are continuing our internship program. This year, three interns have completed their internships; two of them then joined the next CEDOS projects. Meanwhile, another intern started her internship at the organization at the end of the year.

Further education and the internship program became possible thanks to the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Projects

In 2019, CEDOS worked on 20 big and small projects. We organized or co-organized 20 events in 7 cities. We got 2.3 million reactions to our social media publications; and we were mentioned in traditional media 910 times. We regularly update our own Facebook and Instagram pages, several Telegram channels and two regular email lists.

We have conducted 6 qualitative sociological surveys, and formulated the methodology, commissioned the fieldwork and analyzed the results of 4 quantitative surveys, in particular:

  • As a part of the project Freedom of Movement for Everyone: Reforming the System of Registration of the Place of Residence in Ukraine, we conducted a nationwide survey among the population of Ukraine aged 18 to 75, with some exceptions. 5,400 people were surveyed in total.
  • As a part of our complex study of the state housing policy in Ukraine, we surveyed 2,500 residents of Ukrainian cities with populations of 100,000 or more, aged 18 and above.
  • We surveyed applicants to higher education institutions in Ukraine about their applications, with a nationally representative sample of 2,000 people.
  • We conducted the second wave of the survey of students about academic integrity in 10 universities which participate in the Project for Promoting Academic Integrity in Ukraine from the American Councils.

This year, we successfully underwent an external evaluation of our big four-year project Increasing Public Participation in Ukrainian Cities; we also received a letter of gratitude from Education and Science Minister Lilia Hrynevych, saying: “Your team does the best education research in this country.”

Civic Position

The key values of CEDOS are social justice and evidence-based policy (that is, making decisions based on evidence, data and research).

Effective governance, in our opinion, is:

  • awareness of the values which administrative decisions are intended to implement;
  • research and working with data in order to progress towards these values more effectively.

We consider both components to be equally important for improving the quality of life in Ukraine. That is why we dedicated a “fair governance marathon” to this topic—a series of 6 presentations of our studies and discussions about goals and values that should form the foundation of government policies.

In late 2019, Dmytro Dubilet, the Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, announced the intention to abandon the “traditional” census in 2020 and conduct a “so-called electronic census” instead. Since one of CEDOS’s values and goals is to develop government policies on the basis of data and research, we prepared a statement explaining why alternative methods of assessing the population size cannot replace the traditional census. We are grateful to other organizations in this field, experts and everyone who cares for supporting this initiative: http://bit.ly/zayava_perepys 

For several years, one of the central foci of CEDOS’s attention was air pollution in Ukrainian cities. During the Ukrainian Urban Forum in 2019, the environment became one of the cross-cutting issues in the center of several discussions. In September 2019, we supported and joined the International Climate March in Ukraine.

Migration

Statistics of International Migration

Ukraine’s approaches in the sphere of calculating migration statistics do not meet the international standards and need improvement. Although Ukraine collects a lot of information in the sphere of migration, there are still many problems related to the quality of the data, their completeness, and the correspondence of the concepts behind the statistical indicators to international standards.

In 2019, we assessed the correspondence of government statistics and departmental statistical reports in the sphere of international migration in Ukraine to Eurostat standards, and prepared methodological recommendations for the State Statistics Service, State Migration Service, State Border Service, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Security Service of Ukraine based on this assessment.

The methodological recommendations based on the results of the assessment can be found here: http://bit.ly/Mstat_results 

The project was implemented in collaboration with the State Migration Service as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

System of Registration of the Place of Residence

As a part of a project with ZMINA and the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, we conducted the second study of the system of registration of the place of residence.

According to the findings of our nationwide survey, the fraction of people who do not live at their place of registration is 12%, which is equivalent to at least 3.3 million of the adult population of Ukraine. If we account for the population categories which were not included in the survey, the total number of people who do not live at their place of registration or who have significant difficulties with registering their place of residence can reach at least 6.8 million. 

Thanks to our collaboration with ZMINA Human Rights Information Centre, the study findings became the basis of the Registration Reform campaign. The policy brief and the report on the findings of the study can be read here: http://bit.ly/ZvitRMP.

The study was conducted as a part of the project Freedom of Movement for Everyone: Reforming the System of Registration of the Place of Residence in Ukraine, implemented by ZMINA Human Rights Centre in partnership with CEDOS Think Tank, the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, and the Center for Political and Legal Reforms with financial support from the European Union.

Female immigrants in Ukraine

We conducted an exploratory qualitative study of the problems of access to the Ukrainian labor market among female foreign immigrants. Our question was why some female immigrants have managed to find decent jobs, while others were never able to escape the limits of closed locations of ethnic concentration in the labor market. 

We interviewed several representatives of a hard-to-reach group of immigrants to Ukraine who work at markets, in the food serving industry, service industry, as well as women with highly professional jobs. We talked with representatives of the government, NGOs in this field, and leaders of immigrant communities about the problems of migrant women in the labor market and about policy measures in this sphere. We held a discussion with experts about employment of female migrants, about migration policy and its connection to the labor market policy.

The brief based on the findings of the study can be read here: http://bit.ly/immigrantky.

The project was realized as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Students Abroad

According to the available data and our predictions, at least 83,000 Ukrainian nationals studied at universities abroad in the academic year of 2017/2018. This makes up about 8.5% of the total number of Ukrainian students in full-time higher education programs — including both those who are in Ukraine and those who are not.

Which countries consider our young people strategically important? Why do they go abroad to study? What can or should be done with the growing migration of student youth out of Ukraine, and who can or should do it? To answer these questions, we traditionally collected and analyzed data from 38 countries. The analytical material can be read here: http://bit.ly/zakordonne_studentstvo

Integration of Internally Displaced People

It takes a few years to settle at a new location after displacement. What can local governments and the civil society do so that the IDPs could realize their potential, including for the benefit of the community?

Within two weeks, we visited Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kramatorsk, Zaporizhia and Dnipro with our workshops. Then the local participants of our workshops wrote local strategies of integration under the mentorship of our migration analyst, created infographics about these local strategies, and presented the strategies to local governments and the civil society. After systematizing this experience, we created step-by-step instructions for making evidence-based and effective decisions about integration: https://integrate.cedos.org.ua/ 

The workshops and strategy writing were parts of the project Workshops on Monitoring the Integration of Internally Displaced People in Ukraine, supported by the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation.

We also studied international experience to present possible approaches to measuring IDP integration to the Ministry of Social Policies; and we held a discussion about the work we had done with the public, experts, and public officials.

The analysis of the possible approaches to defining the long-term goals of integration and the relevant indicators can be found here: http://bit.ly/Integratsia_pidhody

The analysis was carried out as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Sexual Education

Sexual education for teenagers has become a rather popular topic. Courses are developed; lectures and workshops for children, parents and teachers are held; information campaigns are organized; the media write a lot of articles about it. However, various sexual education events mostly take place outside of schools, so they do not involve everyone who should receive such education.

In August-November 2019, CEDOS Think Tank conducted a study of sexual education at Ukrainian schools, particularly the content of sexual education in the curricula and whether it meets the needs and expectations of participants of the education process.

Then we organized a closed event. The closed format allowed us to create a trustful atmosphere after the presentation of the study. The dialogue involved representatives of youth and parents organizations, religious and non-governmental organizations, education workers, psychologists and health care workers. The attendees actively emphasized the need for sexual education at schools in particular, as places which are equally accessible to all children in the country.

The findings of the study can be read here: http://bit.ly/Seksosvita 

The project was realized as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Higher Education

Review of the Education Sector in Ukraine

CEDOS provided the data and context analysis for the World Bank study called the Review of the Education Sector in Ukraine: Moving toward Effectiveness, Equity and Efficiency. Among other things, we composed the arrays of data on secondary education and higher education institutions. We wrote the descriptive data analysis of secondary education indicators in Ukraine, and analyzed which factors could affect education inequality among schoolchildren. The report is available here (in English): http://bit.ly/forWorldBank 

Choice of Higher Education

In 2019, applicants and their parents were the ones who distributed funding among higher education institutions in Ukraine. Each institution’s state funding depended on how many applicants who achieved the right to have their tuition covered from public money chose this institution. To make their influence on the amount of university funding justified, we, together with the Ministry of Education, created and distributed a guide on how to make an informed choice in higher education. 

Thanks to our cooperation with the Ministry, links to the resource were published on all the key websites which applicants had to visit in order to apply for higher education institutions. We involved Andriy Kulykov and Yevhen Komarovsky in the information campaign, and they recommended the guide on social media, while the minister of education and science spoke about the instrument on air in the top TV shows.

During the application campaign, the guide was used by 98,000 users. They viewed the page 131,000 times. When the campaign ended, it became known that this year’s applicants submitted fewer applications, because their choice was more focused.

The guide can be read here: https://cedos.org.ua/vybir 

We are continuing to study young people’s motivations to receive higher education and their ways of choosing the place to study. Through a quantitative survey and in-depth interviews with first-year students, we are looking for answers to the following questions in particular: Why do young people decide to get higher education and do they consider its alternatives? What affects their choice of a place to study? When and how do the applicants plan their future in higher education?

The project is realized as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Academic Integrity

For students, lack of academic integrity primarily means bribery and buying theses. Meanwhile, downloading papers from the internet or cheating in tests are tolerated by many.

CEDOS has conducted a study of academic (non-)integrity in 10 Ukrainian universities. Its results were kept confidential and sent to the higher education institutions that participated in it, so they could improve the situation in an informed way. In addition, our interns organized a discussion about this issue involving students and administrators of higher education institutions.

Visualizations of the anonymized data can be seen here: http://bit.ly/4omu_spysuyut 

The study was a part of the Project for Promoting Academic Integrity in Ukraine, implemented by the American Councils for International Education, with the assistance of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and support of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. The presentation was organized as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Education and Science Budget 2019

Every year, we analyze the education and science spending planned in the State Budget in order to understand if proper funding has been allocated for all the needs of the education sphere. This year, we tried to analyze them through the lens of the policies which the government defined as priorities in its Medium-Term Plan of Priority Actions for 2017–2020. The analysis is available here: http://bit.ly/освітній_бюджет

The analysis was carried out as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Housing

The state housing policy in Ukraine today has no mechanisms to ensure its citizens’ constitutional right to housing. We have surveyed Ukrainians about their housing conditions. Almost a half of all respondents have no idea or plan as to what they would do and where they would live if they lost the house where they currently live. Among those who want or need to change their residential situation, half could not answer how much time must pass before they are able to do it. The sphere of rental housing is unregulated, does not guarantee any stability and is stigmatized. Differences between regions are growing.

In 2019, CEDOS conducted a complex analysis of state housing policies in Ukraine. We analyzed:

  • scientific research on housing policies in different countries;
  • changes in the Ukrainian legislation over the years of independence;
  • state statistical data;
  • effectiveness of state housing programs;
  • findings of a representative social survey of residents of Ukrainian cities with populations of over 100,000 people, which we conducted in June-July 2019 in collaboration with InfoSapiens.

The findings are available here: http://bit.ly/zhytlo_zvit. We also made a presentation involving representatives of relevant departments and a lecture based on the presentation for the professional community at the Kyiv School of Economics.

Our recommendations were taken into account in the government’s Plan of Action and in the medium-term plan of the Ministry of Development of Communities and Territories.

The project was realized as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

City

Ukrainian Urban Forum 2019

In 2019, we organized the Ukrainian Urban Forum for the second time. This project is a response to the demand among the members of Ukrainian urbanist movements, which they expressed at strategizing sessions held by CEDOS in 2016–17.

The forum took place in Zaporizhia, a big industrial city with a Cossack history which has not been sufficiently explored by Ukrainian urban researchers and activists. How can urbanist movements develop in such cities? What have the local activists and urban development professionals already been working on? What could equality and fairness look like under these conditions? And what kind of discoveries and conclusions can be made by people from other cities as they analyze Ukraine’s urban problems using the example of Zaporizhia?

These and other questions were discussed on June 21–22 by almost 200 participants of the forum: representatives of the civil society, government bodies, expert communities, academic institutions and commercial organizations.

In 2019, we created the forum website https://urbanforum.org.ua, as well as the Facebook page and the Telegram channel of the Ukrainian Urban Forum. The publications that resulted from the forum are available here: http://bit.ly/UUFstatti 

The forum’s local partner in 2019 was Dzyga NGO. The forum was supported by the Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ukraine.

Ukrainian Urban Forum 2020

The Ukrainian Urban Forum is growing. This time, so many organizations wanted to become our local partners and help us organize the event outside Kyiv that we had to announce a selection procedure. We received 30 applications from 21 cities. As a result of the selection, the 2020 Forum will be held in Khmelnytsky. We really liked many of the applications, so now we’re looking for opportunities to organize a “travelling forum”: to hold smaller-scale events in several other cities where there is demand for them.

The announcement for the Ukrainian Urban Forum 2020: http://bit.ly/UUF-2020 

The forum is held with the support of the Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ukraine. Our local partners in 2020 will be the Proprostir community initiative, the Agency for the Development of Khmelnytsky, and the Khmelnytsky City Council.

Ukrainian-German Education Exchanges

A fair city is a city where decisions are based on data and research and made with the involvement of citizens. The core values of a fair city are equality, inclusivity, human rights and social justice.

As a part of an education project to strengthen urban movements in Ukraine and Germany, 10 Ukrainian urban activists visited their colleagues in Berlin, Leipzig and Erfurt. Meanwhile, activists from Germany visited their Ukrainian colleagues in Kyiv, Zaporizhia and Lviv. A number of public events were held as a part of the project. This way, we created opportunities for representatives of grassroots initiatives to think together on how to make our cities fairer.

As we searched for participants, we received almost 300 applications from Ukrainian activists. Now we’re looking for opportunities to organize more exchanges of this kind.

The exchange was organized in partnership with Internationaler Arbeitskreis e.V. and supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Mistosite

In 2019, we continued to work on developing the Ukrainian urbanist platform Mistosite. We published 33 materials in Ukrainian and 3 in English. The website’s annual audience reached about 60,000 users.

We continued to moderate the Urbanism UA Facebook community, which has reached nearly 2,000 participants. At the same time, because of the end of the Strengthening Citizen Participation in Ukrainian Cities project, we stopped supporting the announcement board for urbanist events and opportunities.

Read Mistosite at: https://mistosite.org.ua/

Urbanism UA Facebook community: http://bit.ly/UrbanismUA 

Strategies of City Development

The processes of decentralization of government have been taking place in the world for the past 50 years. Some power is transferred from national bodies to local ones, as well as to the civil society and businesses. Urban strategies are a way to coordinate values, visions and goals of various stakeholders and to create a shared vision of future urban policies. For this purpose, members of as many various groups of city residents as possible are engaged in strategy development.

We analyzed the Development Strategy of Kyiv until 2025 and determined its place among other strategic documents at various levels; we also studied theoretical approaches and the core legislative basis for the development of city and regional  strategies in Ukraine. Based on this, we developed recommendations on how to improve the approaches to creating city strategies and held a public discussion. The policy brief can be read here: http://bit.ly/stratehii 

The project was carried out in partnership with the Public Communication and Information Center of the Kyiv City State Administration, as well as the Kyiv Public Platform as a part of the Think Tank Development Initiative in Ukraine, implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation in partnership with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE) with financial support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine.

Integrated Development of Podil District in Kyiv

Evidence-based policies presuppose that first we need to have a strategic vision, and then plan specific tactical steps based on it. Throughout 2018–19, CEDOS participated in the project for developing the Concept of Integrated Development of Podil District.

Two of the 12 working groups that worked on the Concept were formed by CEDOS Think Tank. We worked on the issues of education and social development. As a result, social justice became one of the 7 goals of the Concept.

The Integrated City Development in Ukraine project is implemented by the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) at the request of the Kyiv City State Administration and funded by the governments of Germany and Switzerland.

Election Debates between MP Candidates from Kyiv

We are convinced that MP candidates from plurality districts in Kyiv must have a vision of the capital’s development. So before the parliamentary election, we organized debates on the reform of local self-government in Kyiv: distribution of powers between the local self-government and the state administration, the city’s division into districts and the powers of government bodies at the district level, and the question of interaction with the neighboring towns and suburbs.

The discussion participants included a current Kyiv City Council member, a current MP and two MP candidates who later became MPs after the election.

Democracy

In 2017-19, CEDOS Think Tank studied the interaction between city government bodies and the civil society, as well as the processes of administrative decision making in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv.

Which mechanisms of decision making allow to take into account the needs of residents? What are the best practices that exist in this sphere? What should be changed in this interaction to make it more effective? To answer these questions, we surveyed public officials and representatives of the civil sector, and analyzed city strategic documents.

The study resulted in a set of practical recommendations on how to overcome obstacles in the interaction between civil society representatives and officials. They are universal and can be used in different cities. Read them and download the recommendations in the form of illustrations here: http://bit.ly/miski_komunikacii 

The results of qualitative sociological studies and document analyses for individual cities that were published in 2019:

Citizen Engagement in the Policy Making Process in Kyiv: http://bit.ly/Zaluchennia 

Interaction between Local Self-Government Bodies and the Civil Society in Lviv: http://bit.ly/Lviv_rishennia

Interaction between Local Self-Government Bodies and the Civil Society in Kharkiv: http://bit.ly/Kharkiv_rishennia

The studies were conducted as a part of the project Strengthening Citizen Participation in Ukrainian Cities, supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and as a part of the Council of Europe project Promoting Citizen Involvement in the Democratic Decision Making Process in Ukraine in collaboration with the Kyiv City State Administration.

Financial Report

 Project TitleDonor or purchaserBeginning dateEnd dateTotal budget (USD)Spent in 2019 (USD)Received in 2019 (USD)
1Strengthening Civic Participation in Ukrainian CitiesCharles Stewart Mott Foundation4.20173.2019125 00033 246–
2Joint research with public authorities and debates of CEDOS for evidence-based public policy decision-makingInternational Renaissance Foundation and Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine1.201912.201926 36526 36526 365
3Women Migrant Integration to the Ukrainian Labor Market and SocietyInternational Renaissance Foundation and Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine8.201912.2019576657665766
4Creation of preconditions for development of sexual education in schoolsInternational Renaissance Foundation and Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine7.201911.2019697469746974
5Analysis in General Secondary Education and Higher EducationWorld Bank12.20184.201912 904748412 904
6Administration and activists: how to work together and survivePrague Civil Society Centre6.20183.20191014865–
7Institutional development of CEDOS to promote evidence-based decision-making in reforms in UkraineInternational Renaissance Foundation and Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine5.201810.2020201 637101 22476 000
8Trainings on the monitoring of IDPs integration in UkraineBlack Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation1.20197.201919 39019 39019 390
9Strengthening civil society organisations to keep reforms in Ukraine on trackKingdom of the Netherlands8.20198.202182 891113649 734
10Ukrainian Urban Forum 2019 “People, City, Industry”Heinrich Böll Foundation Regional Office in Ukraine5.20198.201916 90016 90016 900
11Local Activists Dialogue for Cohesive CitiesInternationaler Arbeitskreis e.V. and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany9.201912.201927 48327 48327 483
12Freedom of movement for everybody: reform of the residence registration system in UkraineHuman Rights Centre ZMINA and European Union3.20183.201913 5804113–
13Strengthening Academic Integrity in UkraineAmerican Councils for International Education and US Department of State11.20185.2019391339133913
14Mapping Study into Entry Points for Citizens’ Engagement in Policymaking in Kyiv. Challenges and Opportunities for Citizen Engagement in KyivCouncil of Europe Office in Ukraine2.201911.2019372615623492
15Study “Awareness and attitudes of teachers and parents to comprehensive sexuality education”United Nations Population Fund12.20196.202032 27914 93222 595
  Total   271 353271 516

Illustration: Zhenya Oliinyk

Translation: Roksolana Mashkova