The Ro3kvit Urban Coalition presented a volunteer project to restore the Hirske community in Luhansk Oblast.
The mountainous community suffered significant damage and was occupied at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Currently, more than 30,000 of its residents live in other regions of Ukraine and abroad. In July 2022, the Hirske City Military Administration asked the Ro3kvit urban coalition to develop a strategic vision for the community’s recovery, as many residents want to return home and rebuild the community.
‘At first, we hesitated whether to take on this request from the Hirka community – to create a vision for a community under occupation. Does it make sense to dream about the future in such conditions? But in the end, we accepted this challenge. And I am glad that we dared to explore opportunities even in extremely difficult circumstances. Together with the community, we have developed a methodology that can be useful for many other occupied communities,’ said Fulco Treffers, one of the project participants and co-founder of Ro3kvit.
The experts decided to work in three hypothetical situations. The first is that the war is over and the community is de-occupied. Second – the community is de-occupied, but the war continues. Third – the community remains occupied.
The main challenges were the lack of spatial data, limited resources, inability to access the territory and uncertainty of the future.
‘Cooperation with the RoZkvit team provided an opportunity to plan, gather residents and show them how important the steps we are taking now are, how important it is not to give up hope of returning home. I hope that together we can make small changes and build a great future,’ said Oleksiy Babchenko, Head of the Hirske City Military Administration.
