In FY 2010, Heifer-Ukraine has continued its active partnership-building to support smallholders and AS coops – active agents of change in rural development. Priority partners of Heifer-Ukraine include:

-         State authorities and local self-governments;

-         Socially responsible businesses;

-         Funding institutions and international organizations.

After Heifer-Ukraine has successfully lobbied for the approval of The State Special Economic Program of Supporting Agricultural Service Cooperatives Development till 2015 (adopted in 2009); it continues its work to ensure effective implementation of this program. Last year Heifer-Ukraine has actively assisted coops to participate in the competition in the frame of this Program and receive state co-funding for purchasing equipment.

One of the positive results of our advocacy is the effective collaboration with the Ministry of Agricultural Policy of Ukraine.

In FY 2010, 16 coops from different regions of Ukraine were recognized as successful and received non-refundable co-funding from the state for purchasing agricultural equipment in the frame of the Program.

In working with socially responsible businesses our successes in FY 2009 include building effective collaboration with Danone/Ecosystem Fund (France) and Danone-Ukraine. This partnership already bears fruits as Milk Communities Project (Phase 1, for the amount of 500,000 Euro) was approved by the Social Innovation Committee of the Danone/Ecosystem Fund and launched in February 2010. The Phase 2 of the Project is expected to be approved at the beginning of 2011.  Development of another large project has started in the summer of 2011 – on establishment of a Cooperative Learning Farm operated by the Union of AS cooperatives in Dnipropetrovsk oblast. A third project is also under way with expected funding from Danone/Ecosystem Fund – on supporting smallholders in Western Ukraine in modern strawberry production methods.

Partnership building with international organizations in FY 2011 resulted in several grants from FAO.

Set of projects approved by FAO TeleFood Special Fund for Ukraine with Heifer-Ukraine as an implementing partner includes six mini-projects to assist six rural communities in improving means of production, enabling them to produce more food and to generate cash income, thereby allowing better access to food. The projects will be launched in the next fiscal year.

Heifer-Ukraine has also been-subcontracted by FAO Sub-regional Office for Central and Eastern Europe, Technical Cooperation Programme, to conduct marketing research of potential origin-linked quality food products and their demand in Ukraine. The project has had the following objectives:

•        the assessment of the potential for GI food products in Ukraine (GI products are traditional high quality products with Geographical Reference) and their supply chains;

•        the assessment of the potential demand of Ukrainian consumers for domestic GI products and Ukrainian GI products' potential on export markets;

•        the elaboration of recommendations and proposals for follow-up action to enable the Ministry for Agrarian Policies to support the development of the GI potential in Ukraine.

The survey also showed a high need for an information campaign to inform both consumers and producers on traditional geographically-linked quality products, GI certification, and history of products.

The project is expected to result in a follow-up large scale technical cooperation project to improve the institutional environment of certifying GI food products (quality traditional products with Geographical Indication) in Ukraine and have several pilot certifications for groups of small rural producers.

We are also working on getting funding from other funding institutions. Partnership-building will be a top priority in the coming year.