How to communicate Ukraine's recovery: analysis and recommendations
An analytical research with recommendations for the restoration of Ukraine during and after the time of the great war for governmental bodies, non-governmental organizations, international donors, and other stakeholders.
The research aimed to identify the problems and challenges hindering qualitative, transparent, and honest communication regarding Ukraine's restoration, and what can be done to unite all key participants in the conversation about changing the country, not just building houses and roads.
Recovery — replacing, changing, and improving what Ukraine and its citizens have lost as a result of Russian aggression – must be combined with reforms and building healthy institutions. The focus of the recovery process should be on the individual (group of people, community, neighbourhood) and their needs. This gives a chance not only to recover what was lost but also to solve the problems that arose under Soviet rule and in the first decades of independence. To make this possible, and to ensure that the restoration is not limited to repairs, building houses and asphalting roads, transparent, honest, effective communication between all important stakeholders is necessary.
The Lviv Media Forum, together with the foundation “Healthy Solutions for an Open Society,” summarized a series of expert discussions and interviewed representatives of various groups to find out:
- who are the participants (stakeholders) in the process of Ukraine’s recovery and who plays what role in it;
- what challenges and problems hinder high-quality, transparent and honest communication between all participants;
- what can be done to improve such communication.
This analytical study was a logical continuation of the discussions at the LMF 2023 conference. Work on the document continued in June-July 2023.
In particular, we found out that:
- Communication is not declared as a priority of the recovery organization at the highest level.
- The society is not sufficiently informed about important events, plans and problems related to recovery.
- In conversations about recovery, there is an excessive emphasis on the material side – the repair and reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure.
- The media both a stakeholder and an important infrastructure without which communication among other stakeholders will not be complete, needs urgent help.
- Authorities and communities lack communicators who can fully build interaction with other stakeholders.
- There is a danger of building vertical communication – from the central government to the regions – which pushes other stakeholders to paternalism and passivity.
- Some public information, access to which is important to ensure transparency and a full-fledged discussion about recovery, is classified under the pretext of martial law.
“We were surprised to see how little attention was paid to communication in the recovery program documents,” comments Otar Dovzhenko, a researcher at Lviv Media Forum. “They attach great importance to transparency of spending money, but high-quality communication based on trust and involvement of all important stakeholders is something without which recovery cannot unfold on the scale it is planned. So a serious conversation about recovery communication needs to start as soon as possible.”
In this document, we have formulated proposals for various groups of stakeholders – government agencies, non-governmental organizations, media, communities, and others – that will help solve or at least come close to solving these problems.
This document is addressed to all key stakeholders in Ukraine’s recovery: state and local governments, Ukrainian and international non-governmental organizations, charitable foundations and other donors, academic and expert institutions, Ukrainian and foreign commercial companies, regional and national media, etc.
We hope that this document will be the beginning of a large-scale discussion on recovery communications and will contribute to the development of a strategy that will take into account the interests and capabilities of all stakeholders.
The full text of the document in Ukrainian in pdf format is available by following the link.
This white paper was prepared with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). This research was made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents are the sole responsibility of the Lviv Media Forum and the Healthy Solutions Foundation and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.