Dyvovijni
It is public organization uniting active, responsible Ukrainians in small but concrete actions to make surrounding brighter, well-groomed. The mission is to develop responsibility within Ukrainians for public space, to promote their integration into active and independent community for the changes in the society.
Their projects can be divided into 4 categories: Space Neighbourhood - establishing friendly relations between neighbors as a first step to building active communities of apartment buildings. Than social activities to promote active people for the development of communities they are in. Local changes via development of home yards and team-building projects that will develop civic values, but also will be useful to society, which will have a positive impact on social capital. In addition, they are working within business companies, in order to promote social responsibility
The main founder of the initiative is Mariya Nasedkina, who is in particular at the moment has a full time job within Pact organization - a civil society strengthening project in Ukraine. Initiative “Dyvovijni” was doung by her right after Maidan to teach communities of social collaboration and “doing in actions” idea.
How did you get started and your current situation?
The initiative has started some time ago, when I had an idea and some motivation to change things in my country. The situation here was bad thus i have decided to improve it. I think that everyone should begin from themselves, and by doing this to motivate others.
For a while I was living abroad, and have seen great examples of proactivity. After returning back home, i had only this desire to start the initiative yet I didn’t know much about how to administer it, and generally to make it happen. That’s why for some time i was searching for an interested person to start the project with me. After two months I finally found another person, that is a doer on the matter
We have started from the most simple things, by deciding to create a small event - cleaning of the little forest. 8 people came. And that laid the beginning of our activities and crystallization of our strategy.
Who is involved as your team?
At the moment it’s 6 of us. Each of us have other jobs, yet we are thinking of ways of turning into the social enterprise in order to spare more time for the initiative itself. We have sociologist, analytic, project manager, designer. All of us are involved in development of the project, netherless our duties and thus work outlines are blurred.
At first people were praising us, yet didn’t do much. Thus we formed a concept on teaching how we are making projects and by doing so other projects started to develop. We have also formed a general yearly strategy of development in a general meeting. Daily tasks we are doing mostly online.
Throughout 1,5-2 years more than 30 events have been made, with around 500 people visiting them. Our main themes for projects include urban ones, that we use as instrument, and changes with the public spaces. We are aiming on target involvement, and method of positive changes.
The idea is what motivate me and of course my team. The main positiveness that I find in my work is the people in actions. The main problem is not fast results of your done work. Since responsibility, proactive takes time to build. Values do not change quick. At the moment we are at the process of understanding the next steps, either initiative would turn to have much bigger impact or will end locally
We have decided to create NGO, for the matter of being more secured to receive finance support, due to the fact, that it’s quite hard to do so while being an unofficial initiative. We were working for two years without any support, donating our own money in order to buy some materials for projects.Another aspect is institutive help. Without previous project/grant experience it’s almost impossible to receive some financial help. Yet we have managed without any grants or financial support, due to the fact that for now we are having such expenses: computer, technical facilities, materials for projects, print and promotion. often we are inputting from our own money or using crowdfunding
For this upcoming year we have put 3 tasks:
- Divovjni hang outs: from 1 to 3 events per month with enhancement on activism and collaboration
- Good neighboring: rise of the level of trust within the neighborhood
- Corporate team building: corporate social events/team building to enhance social responsibility. this is the good foundation of the development of social entrepreneurship.
we have some good examples in other countries that we are investigating and taking account. For instance, such projects as :” Do something”, “good neighborhood”, “Random acts of kindness”.
Contacts of the organization:
dyvovyzhni.strikingly.com