[Draft] Our Park project from Slaviansk. Uniting project for the post war torn city

Slaviyansk - is a city where the real war actions has started during last year in Ukraine. People’s activism, and in particular youth activism is becoming more popular with several great initiatives to be launched there: restoration of broken houses after war, renovation and improvement of park, creation of the youth center hub for development of arts, skills etc

In this particular wiki, I will share notes from the interview with Valeriy Nemtsov, an activist who has launched a project of Park renovation that was a problem for a city for almost 10 years, and was neglected especially after the war.

His online presence and his case, I am expecting for tomorrow.

“Our park” project 

The project was launched by couple of activists from several organizations in the city of Slaviyansk. The idea came in winter, mid February. The improuvement of park has been chosen for it’s apolitical content, for the sake of uniting citizens under good social cause and for renovation/restoration of the relax zone of the park. The problem was that the city of the several dozen citizens didn’t have a park and were needed to drive to a nearby city - Kramatorsk. In Slaviyansk the park was flooded by bad drainage system, and this problem created big corruptive schemes, since every next deputy to the city council was promising to restore it and there were couple of million given for it’s restoration, but after 15 years the situation hasn’t changed.

Project included 8 “Subbotniki” - clean-up events with ordinary people helping restore roads, planting flowers etc. The largest amount of comers were 360 people. Organizers were successful in inviting also representatives of the executive power and some entrepreneurs for potential creation of the free economic zone (renting space for looking after it’s small piece of land).

The first big result was celebration of the victory day not on the main street but in the restored central alleys of the park.  The biggest problem of flooding will be eliminated after the conclusion of the special commission on all of the damages and needed equipment. The project will continue up until all problems will be solved.

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Any long-term developments?

I am not sure: is this more like a demonstrative action, with citizens showing they care about the park? If the park has bad drainage, planting flowers is not going to help!

Or is attempting to become a long-term sustainable project? How? What is this free economic zone that you mention?