Legal Development Network helps member organizations become stronger

Publication date: August 20, 2021

The Legal Development Network systematically supports the organizational development of member organizations, seeks opportunities to respond quickly to their requests, develop together and move forward.

«This year, we launched a program to support member organizations. This has become an initiative that will continue in the future,» said Iryna Chaika, LDN’s organizational development manager.

One of the manifestations of the Program was the co-financing of organizational development activities of those partners who demonstrated the best results in the annual monitoring of organizational capacity. With the help of the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, four organizations received funding for their «dreams» in March 2021.

Thus, the Bila Tserkva NGO «Pravova Iednist (Legal Unity)» took this opportunity to unite the team, generate ideas, and attract supporters. They organized team training for teammates.

Strong team, decisive victories, collective success attract! During the training activities, random people started approaching them and asking «Who are you? What does your organization do? Can young people join?» Similar questions began to come through the social network Facebook after the publication of posts about the event. The bridge of future cooperation was established with the Youth Center, with which it was planned to conduct training for children with the involvement of trainers of «Pravova Iednist.» So the activity has become a kind of tool for gaining trust.

Inna Malyshko, an expert, lawyer, and co-founder of the Bila Tserkva NGO «Pravova Iednist (Legal Unity)», says that such an event has been planned for a long time: «We wanted to hold it with members of our organizations, volunteers, present and future. Work out further steps. Everything did not work out: there was not enough time or money. When the opportunity arose to implement the plan, everyone in the organization agreed.

During the training, we generated a pool of ideas and steps for further work, which will be fixed on paper during the organization’s meeting – we want to expand our activities and refine the communication strategy».

But the Khmilnyk NGO «Pravo (Law)» from Vinnytsia oblast helped implement one of the stages of improving branding and visibility in the community. For them, they bought T-shirts and bags for all team members.

«Our organization has been established and has been working for a long time. We are already known in the community. But because of this, we have long neglected to improve our branding. This year, we decided to pay attention to community recognition and made efforts to improve identification. We changed the logo, improved the site. T-shirts and bags are other components of this.

When they see us in branded clothes, they are jealous and want them too,» shared Vitalii Dorokh, the head of the NGO «Pravo (Law),» an expert and coach.

Financial support came on time for the NGO «Podilska Pravova Liga (Podolia Legal League)» (Khmelnytsky). The organization’s lawyers have been working in the same field for a long time, advising on various issues, different categories of the population, including victims of gender-based violence. Working with people who find themselves in difficult life circumstances often leads to the emotional burnout of counselors. Therefore, it is crucial to understand and apply methods to prevent emotional burnout, as constant stress can lead to staff turnover.

«The training has helped many of our team, especially those who do not have the proper techniques, to identify problems and find burns. We talked about what worries us.

I noticed that today more representatives of our organization began to express their opinion. We generate new ideas in the format of informal communication, and we pay even more attention to each other’s needs. For example, they began to develop the direction of work with young people. We involve those who need to change the vector of activity a bit,» shared Anastasiia Ploshchynska, executive director of the NGO «Podilska Pravova Liga (Podolia Legal League)».

The Chernihiv Public Committee for the Protection of Human Rights took the opportunity to make an attractive design of the organization’s report for 2020.

«We publish the organization’s report on our website every year, but it was an ordinary document; the professional layout was not used. Now we have an excellent opportunity to present our work to partners and donors in the best visual form,» said Natalia Kulikova, project manager of the Chernihiv Public Committee for Human Rights.

Whether such a practice becomes systematic depends on how much you like the new audience format. To find out, the organization collects feedback.

Yevgen Poltenko, executive director of the Legal Development Network, talks about the strategic goals of the program to support the Network’s member organizations:

«Strengthening the capacity of member organizations since the establishment of the Legal Development Network has become one of our key priorities. After all, the Network is strong with its strong member organizations. Every year, the Network and its member organizations successfully implement larger-scale projects. Our experts create more and more high-quality expert products – research, recommendations, and piloting new legal services models. This progress is indisputable evidence that previous efforts in this direction have not been in vain.

And following the recently developed strategic plan of the LDN until 2025, this work is further intensified. Support for organizational development has become focused on the needs of each individual organization, taking into account the peculiarities of its formation, the current state, and the context in which it operates. Now we help our organizations with the audit of their organizational capacity and implementing measures to strengthen it. We together develop and implement projects, involve experts from organizations in Network’s projects. Practical collaboration is probably the most effective way to enhance the expertise of organizations that come together in such horizontal associations as the Legal Development Network.»

«We will continue to encourage organizations to focus on organizational development and provide the necessary tools to do so. This year’s cycle of monitoring the organizational capacity of the Network’s member organizations will begin in September. According to the Standards of the Legal Development Network, all monitoring activities should be, on the one hand, as simple as possible, organizationally and financially inexpensive, and on the other hand – provide objective information about the activities of each organization. In 2021, we will apply all the positive monitoring practices from previous years,» announced Iryna Chaika.

Author: Halyna Kolesnyk, communications manager of the Legal Development N

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