Project “Active Communities for Safe Cities” is designed to provide public school teachers in rural Ukrainian areas with information on how to apply the real Polish experience of preventing public schools from closing and instead having them function as community centers in rural Ukrainian communities.

Currently, small Ukrainian communities and towns face the threat of closure of their schools because Ukrainian governmental officials claim that schools in the small areas deliver a poor level of quality education. Eighty comprehensive schools were closed during 2010, and the number of school closings will be accelerated in 2011 due to governmental spending cuts. Closing schools in smaller areas usually results in a worsening of the quality of life in the communities because schools are one of the most significant centers of social, cultural and economic life within communities. Poland faced the same threat in 2005-2007. However it managed to preserve schools in the smaller areas by the introduction of a new model of school administration developed by the all-Polish non-profit organization “Educator”. Fifty teachers from Ukraine have been exposed to the Polish experience of public school preservation in rural areas during short-term internships in Poland. Since their return to Ukraine, these teachers have started to implement the Polish experience in their own communities.

This project facilitates the sharing of information on how to apply the Polish experience in those Ukrainian communities where the teachers and the community face the threat of school closures.

Project “Active Communities for Safer Cities” is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation.