Not The Future, But The Present: young people, with the support of partners, are changing the quality of life in the village of Tsentralne in the Mykolaiv region

Publication date: October 20, 2025

Author: Yulia Bilyk, Communications Manager, Legal Development Network

Decisive and consistent actions take on challenges, overcome obstacles, and achieve desired goals. Five teenagers from the village of Tsentralne in the Shevchenkivska community of the Mykolaiv Oblast have learned this from their own experience.

Together with mentors and with the support of partners—the Legal Development Network, the Zelenodolsk Local Economic Development Agency, and the Czech humanitarian organization People In Need — the young people successfully went from idea to implementation and created a sports ground for their active leisure time. It was officially opened on October 20, 2025. Now boys and girls have a place where they can warm up between classes, regularly exercise on fitness equipment, or simply spend time outdoors.

The Legal Development Network (LDN) works systematically in southern Ukraine, helping de-occupied communities overcome the consequences of Russian occupation, meet urgent humanitarian needs, and create opportunities for sustainable development. This includes the Shevchenkivska community in the Mykolaiv Oblast, which includes the village of Tsentralne. The Network first met with young people from this settlement in the summer of 2024, when teenagers from Tsentralne and five other villages in the Shevchenkivska community participated in the UpDate: South educational and career guidance program, which was implemented by the Network with the support of the Global Giving charitable platform.

At the end of the intensive training program, which included workshops, lectures, motivational meetings, excursions, and practical classes, teams of teenagers prepared project ideas aimed at improving life in their villages. Even then, the boys and girls from Central understood that they sorely lacked space for active leisure, but after conducting a survey among residents and prioritizing needs, they decided to give up their own interests in favor of access to medicines, which was necessary for everyone.

Thus, they focused their efforts and, together with their mentor in the UpDate: South program, Kirill Ratushnyak, made significant progress in implementing a project to organize a mobile pharmacy in the village. In particular, they managed to get in touch with representatives of large Ukrainian pharmaceutical companies and prepare an open letter to the Ministry of Health regarding assistance in ensuring free access to medicines.

After two months of working on the project, the teenagers learned that the International Committee of the Red Cross was opening a mobile pharmacy that would also serve the village of Tsentralne. At first, the young people had mixed feelings about the news, because the community knew about their idea, and it turned out that their efforts had been in vain. But then they realized that they had the opportunity to meet the village’s second priority need — to create a sports ground near their high school.

“I see great value in this project. After all, in September 2025, students from the lyceum in Tsentralnyi, which also includes children and teenagers from surrounding villages, will study in person at the newly built underground lyceum for the first time since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic began, followed by full-scale war in 2022, rather than remotely. Accordingly, the equipped playground can motivate young people to go outside during breaks, move around, see the light, and breathe the air,” emphasizes Kirilo Ratushnyak, mentor of the youth team of the village of Tsentralne.

The initial plan for creating the playground was to raise funds through crowdfunding. The young people announced a fundraiser for 150,000 hryvnias on social media and sought support from local organizations and businesses, as well as well-known businesspeople who work in the Mykolaiv Oblast or are originally from this region.

“The fundraising campaign gave almost no results. In response to our inquiries, we received replies stating that someone already had a budget planned, that they would consider the Central Region sometime in the future, and some did not respond at all. This was our second setback. I noticed disappointment and decreased motivation in the team. But despite this, we did not stop and began to prepare a project application to obtain grant funding for the implementation of the project,” says Kirilo Ratushnyak.

At this stage, the youth team consulted with experts from the Legal Development Network, calculated an approximate budget, and created a presentation that clearly showed how a modern sports ground could look on the vacant lot next to the lyceum, where there is nothing but old car tires.

“We were impressed by the fact that Kirill, as a pro bono mentor, continues to lead a team of young men and women toward their goal, despite the many obstacles they face. That is why we immediately responded to the call to help with the project application. In addition, we involved the Zelenodolsk Local Economic Development Agency, which has proven itself in the south in working with communities and for which working with young people is one of its priorities,” says Oleksiy Tertyshniy, program director of the Legal Development Network.

For the Zelenodolsk Local Economic Development Agency, supporting the idea of the team from the Central Office was a logical continuation of its previous experience in implementing youth infrastructure projects.

“Over the past 10 years, our organization has implemented more than 50 similar projects not only in the Zelenodolsk community in the Dnipropetrovsk region, but also in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. Knowing about the efforts made by the young people to create a playground in the village of Tsentralne, we, as a public organization, decided to help them become grant recipients and, together with our partners from the Legal Development Network, show young people in practice how the entire project implementation process works — from a successful application to implementation, monitoring, and reporting,“ says Yuliia Stadnik, head of the CF ”Agency for Local Economic Development of the City of Zelenodolsk.”

In May 2025, jointly submitted an application to participate in the People In Need project “Strengthening the resilience of conflict-affected communities in southern and eastern Ukraine to meet basic needs and reduce the impact of future shocks” and presented the project to international partners. In July, a letter arrived with the results of the competition and the news that they had won. After several failures and trials of endurance, the young people and their partners received 225,000 hryvnias from the organization People in Need. Almost a year after the idea first appeared, a sports ground was built near the Central Lyceum of the Shevchenkivska community, which can be used by about 150 children and teenagers.

“We all went through this experience together. First and foremost, it teaches us that no matter how difficult it may be, no matter how discouraged we may feel, no matter how vague the prospects may seem, the result will inevitably come. We just need to be patient and keep taking small steps,” emphasizes Kirilo Ratushnyak.

“Promoting youth initiatives is one of the approaches used by the Legal Development Network in its work with communities. We see young people not as the future, but as a powerful force with high potential that is already being realized today,” emphasizes Olga Nastina, Executive Director of the Legal Development Network.

“We are convinced that the girls and boys who directly participated in the project gained a pleasant, incomparable sense of responsibility for the final result. And for many other young people, including those from de-occupied communities, the achievements of the team from the village of Tsentralne will prove that if you want something, you don’t have to wait, you have to act and change the world around you for the better with your own hands.”

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