Environmental Recovery of Communities

In September 2024 our foundation delivered the first batch of generators to the Tsyrkuny community in Kharkiv region. The community had just come through occupation and was entering winter without electricity. We have returned there six times since.

Almost two years alongside one community showed us something that is not visible from the outside. When a community starts rebuilding, it makes decisions that will shape its natural environment for decades: where to drill wells, where to discharge wastewater, what to do with ageing dams, which forests to restore first. And it makes them almost blind, because environmental data about its own territory simply does not exist. That is how this programme began.

Key facts

• What it is. A programme dedicated to the environmental recovery of war-affected territorial communities in Ukraine.
• Anchor community. Tsyrkuny rural territorial community, Kharkiv region — a partnership running since September 2024.
• Three lines of work. Assistance to the community at its own request, participation in recovery planning, and assessment of ecosystems and water systems.
• Evidence base. Seven handover certificates, all recorded in the foundation's public register of delivered assistance.
• Academic support. Educational and Research Institute "Institute of Public Administration", V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University.
• International partnership. Social Association "Ukrainian Refugees UAPT" (Portugal) and its ESD&GT project movement — cooperation since 2023.

About the applicant organisation

Registration documents are published in the Documents section: an extract from the Unified State Register and an extract from the Register of Non-Profit Institutions and Organisations.

How the programme grew out of humanitarian aid

We did not arrive in Tsyrkuny with an environmental programme. We arrived with generators. That is the honest beginning of this story and we are not rewriting it.

The community north of Kharkiv was occupied in the first weeks of the full-scale war, liberated in September 2022 and damaged to the point that around a quarter of its pre-war population of nearly 12,500 people remained. Recovery began with electricity: without it neither the wells, nor the school, nor the outpatient clinic work.

But by the seventh visit to the same community in two years, you stop seeing only a list of needs and start seeing a system. Wastewater treatment facilities are out of operation entirely, most households rely on cesspits, and the river and floodplain meadows receive whatever the sewerage does not. In a community like this, every subsequent engineering decision will either save those ecosystems or finish them off — and those decisions are being made right now.

Tsyrkuny community: 22 months alongside

The first delivery was in September 2024. The most recent was in July 2026. There were five more in between, with no gap longer than a few months. In autumn 2024 it was emergency power before winter; through 2025 the work became regular; in 2026 it continues.

The foundation does not arrive in a community with its own view of what that community needs. Every delivery began with a written request: the administration set out the need, the foundation raised the funds and procured, and the handover was formalised by a certificate signed by the recipient.

We are not reproducing those records here — they are already open. The full list with dates and certificate numbers is in the public register of delivered assistance: it holds 229 certificates, and the Tsyrkuny entries can be found by the recipient's name.

What this partnership looks like

On 4 December 2025, in Tsyrkuny, the foundation and the Tsyrkuny rural territorial community signed partnership documents. That was the moment the relationship moved from one-off deliveries of aid into joint work on recovery: by then the community was already preparing its development strategy to 2030 together with researchers from Karazin University.

Signing of partnership documents between the foundation and the Tsyrkuny rural territorial community, 4 December 2025

There are three partners in this work, each with their own part. The community sets the tasks and takes the decisions — it is the owner of its territory. The Institute of Public Administration at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University provides the methodology; its researchers gave methodological support to the Strategy. The foundation covers what neither of them has: funding for specific needs, field work, and access to international programmes. Neither party does another's job.

Participants of the signing with the signed documents, Tsyrkuny, 4 December 2025

Tsyrkuny is a community where a sign reading "I ♥ Tsyrkuny" stands at the entrance, and next to it the tents of a resilience point. A quarter of the pre-war population, ruined infrastructure — and people who came back and are making plans for 2030.

Tsyrkuny, December 2025: the "I ♥ Tsyrkuny" sign by the road, with the tents of a resilience point beside it

From assistance to planning

In 2025 the community began developing its own recovery strategy. The working group was established by order No. 01-04/106 of 30 July 2025 issued by the Head of the Tsyrkuny Rural Military Administration, with methodological support from researchers of the Institute of Public Administration at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. The result — the Development Strategy of the Tsyrkuny Territorial Community to 2030 — was approved by order No. 01-04/82 of 16 June 2026 and published on the community's website.

Our role in that work was a partner's role, and it was unpaid. Professor Ihor Dunaiev, the programme's scientific lead, sits on the working group as an invited expert representing the Institute of Public Administration. Other members of our team contributed to consultations and discussions on a voluntary basis — at the time we did not yet see that a separate programme would grow out of this, and we did not formalise the cooperation.

We are formalising it now. We have approached the Tsyrkuny Rural Military Administration for official confirmation of the scope of our involvement, so that from here on we can point to a document rather than to recollections.

International partnership

The foundation has been cooperating with the Social Association "Ukrainian Refugees UAPT" (HELPUA.PT), Portugal, since 2023. In 2026 the parties formalised this partnership through a memorandum.

The Association runs the ECO-PLATFORM OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT & "GREEN" TRANSITION (ESD&GT) project movement — an international think-tank community of subject experts, representatives of research and educational institutions, certification and legal bodies, volunteers and civic activists working on reform advocacy and comprehensive rehabilitation. Its purpose is to build constructive engagement with international donor programmes for the post-war recovery of Ukrainian regions, in line with "green" transition priorities.

Within the platform, the Portuguese-Ukrainian Platform for Environmental, Mine Safety and Rehabilitation (PT UA EMSR Platform) is being developed. In international programmes this line of the foundation's work is presented under the name SURE Hub.

Three lines of work

• Tsyrkuny 2030 — contribution to a community recovery plan for a front-line community: baseline ecosystem assessment, a household survey, and measurable targets to 2030.
• Water systems of the Tsyrkuny community — assessment of water supply, wastewater and aquatic ecosystems, and of their alignment with European Union environmental standards.
• A network of six communities — a partner network of six territorial communities in Kharkiv and Kyiv regions for replicating a model of community-based governance of natural assets.

Programme team

The full staff list is on the Team page.

Every figure carries its source

This is the rule we follow when writing about this programme, and it is not decorative.

Data on the state of ecosystems, water infrastructure and pollution in the Tsyrkuny community come from the community's Development Strategy to 2030 — an official document approved by an order of the military administration. We cite it, and we do not present its figures as our own measurements. Data on delivered assistance come from the foundation's register of handover certificates, which is public and updates automatically. Where we describe our own work, we name its form: funded, participated, advised.

This is simpler for us and for anyone verifying us. Every statement on these pages can be opened and traced to its source.

What comes next

The programme's immediate task is to transfer the model developed in Tsyrkuny to other communities travelling the same road — from emergency repairs to informed stewardship of their own natural assets. That requires partnerships with communities and external funding, and we are working on both.

The second task is to hold the evidence standard. A community deciding on a well or a discharge point should rely on data, not on guesswork. Our part of the job is to make sure that data arrives in time.

Sources

• Development Strategy of the Tsyrkuny Rural Territorial Community to 2030 — approved by order of the Head of the Tsyrkuny Rural Military Administration No. 01-04/82 of 16 June 2026
• Order of the Head of the Tsyrkuny Rural Military Administration No. 01-04/106 of 30 July 2025 — on the composition of the working group for developing the Strategy
• Register of assistance delivered by the foundation — 229 handover certificates
• Registration documents of the foundation — extract from the Unified State Register; extract from the Register of Non-Profit Institutions and Organisations
• ECO-PLATFORM OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT & "GREEN" TRANSITION (ESD&GT) — project movement of the Social Association "Ukrainian Refugees UAPT", Portugal

This material is informational. Data on the ecosystems and water infrastructure of the Tsyrkuny community are cited from the community's Development Strategy to 2030 with the source indicated; the foundation did not carry out laboratory measurements of its own.