The project, developed by the experts of DVV International in Ukraine and public organization “Press Club for Reforms”, aimed was to raise public awareness of sustainable democratic processes and civil society in the five target regions. The authors of the project have set themselves an ambitious goal, to reach which was possible through unity of civil society leaders and media professionals. Background of the project was the lack of NGO’s access to the media and inability of the public sector to use PR-tools to achieve their goals. Although the activities of NGOs and volunteers are respected by their communities, most of the “traditional” media does not inform their readers or viewers about these activities fully. On the other hand in the Ukrainian society there is a crisis of “traditional” media - we see falling newspaper circulation as far as lack of funds at regional broadcasters force journalists to go into advertising instead of creation of high-quality programs.
In addition, smaller cities generally are not represented in the regional media space, while lack of alternative channels to deliver information negatively affects the balanced coverage of political events. According to this, in each region after rigorous competition were selected good partners. They have brought to the project important target groups - young activists and journalists, able to work together and interact with colleagues from other regions. In the long term, the authors of the project hope that at the local level in target areas there will be created new and alternative media channels, able to convey objective information and give a chance for a critical analysis of the electoral situation to all people.
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