How not to do good just for the sake of doing good but indeed helping your community. This issue is studied in detail by the member teams of the Legally Empowered Community training practical program. Lots of services exist due to initiative of a few people. However, are these services really needed or maybe resources thereon are wasted? To find out the truth of what exactly the community residents need, what challenges they encounter and what help they require, 6 initiatory groups from 6 different communities met in Kyiv for the practical workshop of Researching Legal Needs of Communities: Making Access to Justice to be Needed and Effective.
The participants earlier have had four webinars and mastered theoretical knowledge in conducting sociological research. Yet, knowing the theory and being able to apply theory in practice is like apples and oranges. That is exactly why on the 19th and 20th of July the teams met in Kyiv where in PRAVOKATOR Legal Club they had a practical workshop to sharpen their skills in every aspect of researching law demands of the community residents.
The participants focused on improvement of practical skills during the training, namely:
- specifics of arrangement and conduct of research
- development of research strategy
- work with interviewers
- review and presentation of research findings
Executive Director of Legal Development Network public union and Coordinator of the Legally Empowered Community program Yevhen Poltenko shared his impressions about outcomes of these two days:
“The Legally Empowered Community allows for making impossible things to be possible. This is, first of all, about opportunity for the communities to conduct research of legal needs with affordable for them resources and at high professional level.
I am pleased that due to high motivation of the participants and professional level of the program experts the challenges we have faced in the lockdown could not come to stop us but created new opportunities.
My the most striking impression about these two days is related with the notable transformation the research programs of the participants underwent thanks to the experts’ advice, experience shared by the last year’s participants, and persistence of the participants. They became, no doubt, better and more “viable”. Now our participants have a strict implementation plan for their ideas with all risks and chances considered.”
Kateryna Yeroshenko, Secretary in Charge at the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge on Access to Justice, representative of the Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation and the project expert:
“That was pleasant and exciting experience. This is the fist practical workshop in 2020. I had a lot work to do in reviewing the teams programs. I must admit these are extremely strong. What astonished me during these two days were enthusiasm showed by the participants, ability to consider criticism and advise, consult with each other and change yourself. It is important if we would like to see and take account of the community’s demand. What is essential here, not being delighted with your own idea but hear each other and communicate.”
Vitalii Okhrimenko, Program Expert and representative of the Coordination Centre for Legal Aid Provision about his impressions of the event:
“I am sure that the main undiscovered potential of Ukraine is in the communities, in hearts of fascinated people who live there and in capable institutions that run activities there. There is a place where the temper of our society is formed. So only capable and independent communities may become that favourable background from where young people grow up absorbing this temper.
One of the key components of the community’s capability is, undoubtedly, legal capability of people and public who represent the community. However, it is hard to be capable blindfold. Blindness is shown in various forms, however the determinative feature in this case is failure to understand real needs of the community members.
This blindness in enhanced by belief of the communities’ leaders that their high social activities can overcome this information vacuum about needs of the entire community. Nevertheless, as practice goes, this is usually a dangerous illusion, the illusion of real awareness. The Legally Empowered Community is one of attempts to get over this abyss between management decisions made and real needs of all people to have no one behind”.
Representative of Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Program Expert Maryna Shpiker told about what she is the most proud of for these two days of joint work:
“I am highly proud of the participants! I have seen how they improved their skills, perfected their programs. I was pleased when they said: “We have carried out pre-testing and completely “ruined” our questionnaire; we deleted all the text and rewrote it!” This means that they carried the pre-testing properly. I was heartily glad when they said: “We are about to sort out the sample!” It is a highly complicated topic, hard to be understandable by people, so when anyone capable to grasp it appears to come, this is a real joy for me!”
Participants, in turn, highlighted that they had an essential opportunity to put each element of their program under such a thorough verification before it is being implemented. Many knew that it was helpful in avoiding lots of mistakes. What the participants noted the most often were:
- chance to pre-test the questionnaires,
- detailed work with the sample,
- consistency and accuracy of all program elements,
- expertise advice as to program improvement.
Member of the Chervona Sloboda (Cherkasy region) team: Oleksii Kucher about his impressions of the practical workshop:
“The program is very meaty and vivid. Everyone had different knowledge backgrounds; however thanks to the experts we obtained sound knowledge in such complicated issues like sampling, proper questions for questionnaires, detailed tools and many other things. Certainly, a request for additional information may arise; nevertheless we know that we can always rely on the expert aid.”
The teams acknowledged that one of the most interesting parts of the training were reports of the last year’s participants. Experiences were shared by Serhii Koshel and Oleksii Kormiletskyi, the members of the Kreminna ATC team, Kateryna Maltseva, representative of the Shyroke ATC team, and Vitalii Dorokh with Olena Chernii from Khmilnyk ATC who joined remotely.
The event was visited by the initiatory groups from Dnipropetrivsk, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy regions who passed selection.
Training was provided in conformity with requirements of adaptive lockdown:
- sanitary screening,
- available sanitizers and personal protection masks,
- participants kept safety distance,
- meals with appropriate safety measures applied,
- uninterrupted ventilation system in the event location.
The program has been implemented by the Ukrainian School of Practical Knowledge on Access to Justice since 2019 under support of the Coordination Centre for Legal Aid Provision backed by the network of #PRAVOKATOR Legal Clubs, partner organizations and institutions: International Renaissance Foundation, Ukrainian Legal Aid Foundation, and under direct administration by the Legal Development Network.
