Youth budget in Mykolaiv: 10 projects will receive up to $8 thousand for implementation

Youth budget in Mykolaiv: 10 projects will receive up to $8,000 for implementation. Photo: NikVesti

A pilot youth budget project has been launched in Mykolaiv: ten ideas of local youth will receive funding of up to $8,000 each. The projects will be implemented by the end of this year.

This became known on 15 September, during a briefing at the city council, NikVesti reports.

Tetiana Shulichenko, Director of the Economic Development Department of the City Council, stressed that this format will be a test for the future practice of attracting donor funds to city programmes.

Advertising

«Firstly, this project has been shortened in duration so that we can try how to use donor funds at the expense of the public budget. The funds will not go to the city council, they will be transferred through the NGO «Istot», which will implement the projects that receive the most votes,»said Tetiana Shulichenko.

The competition is open to Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 28. The main condition is mandatory registration by 19 September and attendance at the hackathon, which will take place from 23 to 25 September at the Youth Centre in the City Council. After that, participants will have until 3 October to submit their ideas in various areas: entrepreneurship, adaptation to the labour market, mental health, support for IDPs, etc.

«If you do not take part in the hackathon and do not register, you will not be able to submit projects for voting. We hope that young people will actively apply, because we are seeing a lot of interest and a lot of calls to the «hotline». We want there to be a lot of ideas and they should be really interesting,» emphasised Tetiana Shulichenko.

The voting will take place in two formats: online via Bank ID or electronic signature on the e-DEM platform, and offline at the Administrative Services Centre. Only residents of Mykolaiv will be able to choose the winners. The winners will be announced by 30 October. All projects must be implemented by the end of this year.

«We want to hear the voices of young people and understand how they see the city in the future. This is a programme that should inspire and engage young people in the development of Mykolaiv,» said Save the Children International representatives.

Mykolaiv's participatory budget

In September 2017, members of the Mykolaiv City Council approved the Regulation «on the participatory budget of the city of Mykolaiv» and introduced a mechanism for involving citizens in the allocation of part of the city budget. In 2018, for the first time, the winners were selected from among the submitted ideas: 9 large and 19 small projects worth 10 million hryvnias were implemented.

In 2020, the city residents submitted 111 applications, and in 2022 — 166 ideas, of which 125 were allowed to vote. The winners were 40 projects worth more than 20 million hryvnias.

However, in 2022, during the martial law, funding for capital projects from the city budget was suspended, and the implementation of the ideas was postponed.

In February 2025, Mykolaiv adopted a new participatory budget programme for 2025-2027. Its total funding will amount to over 45 million hryvnias.