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Since Ukraine's independence in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union, citizens were increasingly frustrated with the quality of municipal services.
The People's Voice Project started in 1999 to build citizens' abilities to work with local government.
As part of this larger project undertaken by the Canadian
International Development Agency and World Bank, CRCs were identified as an effective way to grant citizens with the needed information to help reforms. The International Center for Policy Studies was identified as the lead institution.
A consortium of NGOs was created to carry out a project in four pilot cities - selected based on their openness to reform. The four pilot cities were
- Ternopil, Ivano Frankivsk, Kupyansk, and Chuguiv.
As a result of the project
- service delivery centers were created and public hearings were held to increase public access to service providers
- policy trainings were carried out to improve the skills of municipal employees and
- the capacity of local NGOs to monitor service delivery was greatly improved.
The role of development agencies was very important to financially support the project and to manage carrying out of the project.
However, the fact that a local NGO carried out the CRC allowed for the development of local capacities and made the project authentic and legitimate.
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