A Network of Communities: Scaling the Tsyrkuny Model

In Tsyrkuny we saw for the first time how it works: a community, a university and a foundation each do their own part, and the result is a document the community can use to make decisions about its own natural environment. It took almost two years.

The next task for this programme is to reproduce that result in other communities without spending two years on each. This page explains what exactly we transfer, how we select communities, and where this work currently stands.

Key points

• What we scale. Not a project and not equipment, but a way of working: a division of roles between the community, academia and the foundation in which data appears before decisions are made.
• Planned size. Six territorial communities in the Kharkiv and Kyiv regions, including the anchor community of Tsyrkuny.
• Composition. Still being formed. Each community's participation is confirmed by a letter of intent, and we will publish the composition of the network after signing — not before.
• Why a network. River basins do not follow community boundaries, so isolated local monitoring produces fragmented data that never adds up to a picture of the basin.
• What already exists. A model tested in Tsyrkuny, an academic partner, an international platform. What does not yet exist: signed agreements with participating communities.

What we mean by "the Tsyrkuny model"

The easiest way to explain it is by contrast. The classic humanitarian scheme works like this: the community describes a need, the foundation covers the need, both sides move on. That scheme works, and it is where we started — seven deliveries of aid since September 2024, all recorded in the public register.

The problem is that it does not affect decisions. While the foundation delivers generators, the community is making decisions about boreholes, wastewater and dams — and making them without environmental data, because the data simply does not exist. In ten years those decisions will be the condition of its rivers.

The model that grew in Tsyrkuny is arranged differently. It has three parties, and none of them does another's work:

The outcome of this work in Tsyrkuny is operational objective 4.1 of the community's Development Strategy to 2030, with nine measurable indicators: how many hectares of forest to restore, how many kilometres of riverbed to clear, how many public monitoring points to establish. These are no longer intentions but lines in a document approved by official order.

It is precisely this shift — from a list of needs to measurable commitments by the community regarding its own natural assets — that we call the model. To scale it means to walk that path with the next communities faster, because the methodology has already been written.

Why a network rather than six separate projects

We asked ourselves this question, and the answer is technical rather than organisational.

A river's catchment area does not coincide with community boundaries and often does not coincide with regional ones either. A community that has measured water only within its own territory gets a number without context: it cannot tell whether the pollution arrived from upstream or originated locally. Two neighbouring communities that measured using different methods in different months cannot add their numbers together — the data will not be comparable.

The network therefore rests on three things:

1. A single measurement methodology. One protocol for all participants: what is measured, with what, how often, how it is recorded. Only then does data from different communities become comparable and add up to a picture of the basin.
2. Training local people rather than dispatching specialists. Equipment and experts for every village require a budget nobody has. Instead we train those who already live in the community: activists, youth councils, local teachers. Spot laboratory analysis remains with specialised organisations — they provide the reference points to which mass measurements are anchored.
3. A shared result. Data gathered by communities is consolidated and becomes the basis for assessing future investment projects in reconstruction, mineral exploration and demining. A single community holding such data is a petitioner. A network of communities holding such data is a party to the conversation.

How we select communities

The network is not assembled on a first-come basis. A community has to meet several conditions at once, otherwise the model will not start there:

• There is a water body under pressure. A river, reservoir or wetland already absorbing the consequences of reconstruction, agricultural load, extraction or demining.
• The community has passed the emergency stage. While a community has no electricity or water, a conversation about ecosystem monitoring is impossible and unnecessary. The model works at the next step — when a community moves from survival to planning.
• There is a functioning local authority. Someone has to adopt legal acts concerning the community's water bodies. Without that, the data has nowhere to land.
• There are people on the ground. An initiative group, a youth council, local activists — those who will carry out monitoring once the training ends.
• There is willingness to formalise participation. First a letter of intent, then an agreement. We do not count a community as a network participant on the basis of verbal consent.

The geography — the Kharkiv and Kyiv regions — is not accidental. These are two different types of pressure on water: a frontline territory with the consequences of combat and demining, and a metropolitan agglomeration with a high anthropogenic load. A model that holds in both will be applicable elsewhere.

Where the network stands now

Here we speak plainly, because this page is read by people who verify.

As of 7 August 2026 the network has one community with confirmed participation — Tsyrkuny — and its participation is confirmed not by a letter of intent but by 22 months of joint work, an official order establishing the working group, and an approved Strategy.

The remaining communities are at the negotiation stage. We do not name them on this page until letters of intent are signed: to call a community a participant before it has confirmed this in writing would be untrue with respect to that community. Once the letters are signed, we will update this page with the full composition and dates.

What is already in place by the time of signing: the model tested in Tsyrkuny, an academic partner — the Educational and Research Institute "Institute of Public Administration" of V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University — and access to international programmes through the ECO-PLATFORM OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT & "GREEN" TRANSITION initiative of the Social Association "Ukrainian Refugees UAPT".

What this work does not yet have

This list matters no less than the previous one.

• No signed agreements with participating communities apart from the anchor one. The network exists as a model and as negotiations, not as an operating association.
• No laboratory capacity of its own. Spot measurements are carried out by specialised organisations under contract, and we do not present their results as ours.
• No external funding for deploying the network. Work on this is under way; for now the programme runs on the foundation's own resources and the voluntary participation of its specialists.
• No monitoring data for the communities beyond what is contained in the Tsyrkuny Strategy. The network is only being built — measurements will begin once local groups are trained.

The limits of what this page covers

A clarification for those reading several of our materials in sequence.

The network described here consists of the sites where the model is being scaled: territorial communities in the Kharkiv and Kyiv regions whose participation is formalised in documents. Everything written above concerns this network specifically.

The foundation also takes part in broader initiatives — together with international partners, with a different set of participants and at a different level of work on water ecosystems. We do not describe those here: while the arrangements are not yet formalised, outlining their scope would be premature.

We keep these things separate deliberately. Conflating them would overstate the scale of what has actually been done — and this page is read by people who check.

What follows from this

The model we are transferring costs little in money and a great deal in time: two years of presence in a community before the first document appeared. The point of the network is to spare the next communities that cost — the methodology has been written, the mistakes have been made, the partners have been found.

What is needed for the network to exist: signed letters of intent from communities, trained monitoring groups on the ground, and funding for the first measurement cycle. We are working on all three now.

Sources

• Environmental Recovery of Communities — a description of the foundation's programme, its team and its working principles.
• Tsyrkuny 2030: the foundation's contribution — an analysis of operational objective 4.1 and the foundation's role in work on the Strategy.
• 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.
• Register of aid provided by the foundation — handover certificates, including those for the Tsyrkuny community.
• ECO-PLATFORM OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT & "GREEN" TRANSITION (ESD&GT) — an initiative of the Social Association "Ukrainian Refugees UAPT", Portugal.

This material is informational and describes the state of the work as of the date of publication. The composition of the network is not listed here because the communities' participation has not yet been formalised in documents; the page will be updated after signing. Figures relating to the Tsyrkuny community are cited from the community's Development Strategy to 2030 with the source indicated.