15 documentary film clubs of the DOCU/CLUB Network in 10 Ukrainian regions have implemented advocacy campaigns in their communities as a part of the DOCU ACTS 2.0 programme.

An important component of the programme was advocacy training. Film club moderators learned how to determine problems that are important for the community, how to unite the community to solve these problems, how to communicate with the government and push it to make the decisions that the community needs. A significant share of moderators proposed ideas of their own advocacy projects after the training; 15 of them received support from the DOCU/CLUB Network to implement the projects in their communities.

Thematically, all the advocacy projects were different: the moderators worked to implement integration programmes for internally displaced people; introduce support programmes for families who have lost their loved ones at war; shape the culture of memory and commemoration of fallen heroes. Some of the teams pushed to adopt programmes and plans to oppose bullying or domestic violence, to introduce mediation practices and solve safety issues in their community. Several projects worked on creating Youth Councils and developing systematic programmes of educational and cultural events for the youth.

The projects are seemingly all so different. What was the uniting force for these ideas, what helped the initiators achieve success in the 2 months allocated for project implementation? The answer is simple: documentary cinema. It was the documentaries from the DOCU/CLUB Network collection that helped the film club moderators draw the community’s attention to the problem, bring people and the government together to discuss the problem, and develop suggestions to solve it.

The Network team helped the moderators pick films from their collection which were thematically relevant to the advocacy projects. People in cities, towns and villages of Ukraine come together to watch and discuss films, they see true stories of real people from Ukraine and all over the world on the screen, get inspired by their search and their struggle for their dreams, and most importantly, they begin to realize that they can also change life in their community for the better.

The advocacy projects in the DOCU ACTS 2.0 programme helped find people in the communities who are prepared to take responsibility and get involved in the active work with the community and communication with the government. Because the goal of an advocacy project is not only to define a problem that exists in a community, but also to develop a plan of action to overcome it and to achieve the incorporation of these actions into the strategic community development plan.

Thanks to these consistent actions by the project initiative groups under the leadership of the film club moderators, real results were successfully achieved. The project initiators submitted the proposals they developed to the local governments and have already obtained positive decisions.

For instance, in Khoroshiv, Zhytomyr Region, project participants’ initiative led the village council executive official to approve measures to improve safety on the road near the school. In Bohuslavets, Cherkasy Region, the decision was made to introduce the position of a counselor at the school to prevent violence among the children. In Hoshcha, Rivne Region, measures to prevent cyberbullying at education institutions will be increased in the new academic year. In Lviv, standards for news updates on official city council channels were approved, according to which all important information published as pictures or infographics must also be provided in text form in order to be accessible to people with visual disabilities. And in Novoyavorivsk in Lviv Region, an initiative group of the Docudays UA film club developed a plan of measures to introduce an alternative way of dispute resolution through mediation in the community and submitted the plan to the city council.

Several film clubs focused their projects on ideas related directly to war and rebuilding. In Pokaliv, Zhytomyr Region, activists achieved the dismantling of a Soviet-era monument which fell under the definitions of the Law on Decommunisation, developed a roadmap to allocate and decorate a memorial place for contemporary heroes in the community and had it approved by the city council. An initiative group in Kremenchuk, Poltava Region, submitted suggestions to introduce changes to the city programme Defender of Ukraine in order to open a sociopsychological support centre for women from military families and female civilian volunteers in the city. As a result of an advocacy project by another film club in the same city, the Kremenchuk City Council received suggestions and methodological recommendations on developing a programme for support groups for the families of the military who were killed in action, are missing, or are in Russian captivity as POWs. In Kivertsi, Volyn, they developed draft Provisions on the Public Council on Issues Related to Volunteering and registered an appeal to the village council to establish a Public Council for Issues Related to Volunteering. And in Voznesensk, Mykolayiv Region, the project initiative group developed and submitted a letter with suggestions to introduce changes to the Plan for the Treatment of Solid Household Waste, with the main goal to create a composting cluster in the Voznesensk community.

Several advocacy projects worked to solve problems that are important for the youth. In Nerubaylivka, Odesa Region, the group initiated the creation of a Youth Council and is currently waiting for the approval of the Provisions for the Youth Council at a village council session. In Chornomorsk near Odesa, activists worked to involve young people and IDPs in the city’s cultural life. They developed a programme of cultural events which has already been approved by the City Council’s Culture Department. In Slobozhanske, Kharkiv Region, young people developed and proposed to include a programme of integration, social adaptation and protection of internally displaced people into the community development plan. In Shostka, Sumy Region, as a part of their advocacy project, young people developed and the mayor approved an action plan for the Youth Council, and right now activists are waiting for its inclusion into the Strategic Plan for Community Development. And in Mykolayivka, Sumy Region, project participants worked to allocate dedicated premises for a youth space. The activists’ suggestions will be considered by the village council at the next session.

More than two and a half thousand participants in 10 regions participated in the implementation of these advocacy ideas. The team of the DOCU/CLUB Network and film club moderators successfully implemented everything they planned. Councilors and local council officials agreed to the teams’ proposals and made the relevant decisions or will consider them at their sessions and include them in community development plans soon.

But the DOCU ACTS 2.0 programme has another significant result: the initiators and participants of advocacy projects learned an effective way to interact with the government to achieve positive outcomes. They will continue to apply this skill. As noted by Oksana Kozlovska, a moderator of a Docudays UA film club in Kremenchuk under NGO Leader and an initiator of one of the advocacy projects, “Now the phrase ‘we’ll never get the government to do anything’ makes us smile and ask in response, ‘But have you tried? Do you need help with that?’”.

Photo: Vasyl Okhrymenko.

Olha Babchuk, Communications Manager of the DOCU/CLUB Network.