City for citizens – support for local initiatives in Belarus

Since the end of 2020, IWO has been supporting the Belarusian-German initiative for the development of local neighborhoods, self-government and participation on the Telegram channel “Сity for citizens“. This is a platform for exchange of experience and cooperation between Belarusian and German initiatives, organizations and interested citizens. The aim is to create a comfortable and safe environment for the residents of Belarusian cities.

German experts share their experience in the areas of neighborhood development, landscaping, self–governance, and addressing local issues of neighborhood communities, including through positive examples of sustainable development projects. Belarusian experts present their vision of whether these practices can be implemented in Belarus today and what steps are needed to make them a reality tomorrow.

Initially, the initiative was supported by the project “Trialogue 2020“, implemented by the international public association ECOPROJECT (Minsk) and HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform (Berlin) with the funding of the Federal Foreign Office. Here, trialogue means a joint exchange between stakeholders from politics and administration, business, organized civil society on participatory and sustainable urban development. The project produced a series of videos on Belarusian and German experiences in citizen participation and successful examples of the implementation of local neighbourhood initiatives.

For the further development of the exchange platform “Сity for citizens” we are interested in attracting German and international experts and practitioners who are willing to share their experience in the development of the participation processes and neighborhood projects.