Minregion to launch the first office to train 1000 project managers for communities, says Vitalii Bezghin at the Carpathian Summit

At Minregion’s initiative, the first Cohesion Policy Office will be established in Ivano-Frankivsk. Minister for Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Vitalii Bezghin announced this at the Carpathian Summit. It will serve as a platform for training project managers who will help communities develop and implement investment projects. Minregion’s initiative to train 1000 project managers for communities will start here.

“Today, more and more European programmes and funding opportunities are opening up to communities. But there is a great deal of work between a good idea and a completed project. We need specialists who can navigate the entire process: identify a community’s need, prepare a concept and budget, conduct procurement, organise implementation and reporting. Our goal is to train 1000 project managers who have these skills and can work directly in communities’ interests,” said Vitalii Bezghin, Ukraine’s Minister for Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons.

▪️ The training will be based on practical work. Community representatives will bring their real projects and work on preparing them with experts over five days.

After completing the training, communities will not be left alone with their projects. Further mentoring and technical support is envisaged: expert consultations, help preparing applications, refining projects and building a regional investment project portfolio.

The Office is thus intended to help communities complete all practical stages of project preparation and improve their chances of securing funding and implementation.

The first Cohesion Policy Office will open in Ivano-Frankivsk. The initiative’s programme manager will be Ihor Popadiuk, a specialist well known in local government circles with extensive practical experience in project and regional work. Frankivsk has experience implementing international projects, an established project team and existing facilities that can be used as practical case studies during training.

The Office’s work will also make it possible to systematically collect the problems communities face when preparing and implementing projects. Minregion will use this experience to improve state instruments for supporting communities and regional policy.

The initiative aims to create a system in which communities have their own trained specialists, access to expertise and support to prepare high-quality investment projects.