The Impact group develops and offers guided Anti-Corruption Walks in Ukraine. Aim of the project is to spread the knowledge on corruption and anti-corruption mechanisms to a broader audience in and outside of Kyiv.

The project develops and scales-up anti-corruption themed city walks for Ukraine as tools for civic education and a contribution to the public discourse on corruption. The aim of the project is to spread the knowledge on corruption and anti-corruption mechanisms to a broader audience in and outside of Kyiv to foster the debate on rule of law, accountability, independence of judiciary and democratic decision-making.

The project will have a threefold approach: First, developing and professionalizing already existing city walks. Second, creating a publicly available database of corruption mechanisms in Ukraine. Third, an academic dialogue on communicating anti-corruption issues. The implementation will last from early summer 2018 until the end of 2018 and take place in Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv and Lviv.

In the summer of 2017, a prototype for the city walk was developed as part of a Ukrainian German Youth Encounter in the framework of an MeetUp youth encounter. After the public presentation in September 2017, the tour was held several times in Ukrainian and English in Kyiv.

The general aims of our project are fostering the rule of law, increase the accountability of public servants to its citizen and to improve provision of justice in Ukraine. The provision of all these public goods is impaired by the high levels of corruption in the country. Therefore, the reduction of corruption is the key. The contribution of our project, here, lies in raising the quality of the public discourse on the topic and by dismantling the research conducted on (anti-)corruption to a broader audience. We want to achieve this by making the discussion on corruption more fact-based and by communicating the knowledge in the field in ways more accessible for a wider range of people. In order to contribute to the public discourse, the tours draw on some of the most drastic and interesting cases of corruption. However, the tours does not only aim to use rampant examples of corruption but tries to use the few available positive stories and instances in which corruption was indeed discovered or successfully fought. Moreover, the goal is to also further develop the concept to enable local activists in other Ukrainian cities, such as Kharkiv, Odessa and Lviv the brand, training and experience of the project in Kyiv.

The core module: Developing and professionalizing the Anti-Corruption Walks

The core module aims at lifting the anti-corruption walk to the next level by training the guides, arranging the organizational structures and providing the walks to a wider audience and expanding the tour to cities outside of Kyiv. The tour will be open to the general public, but the project will focus on young Ukrainians in schools and universities. Based on the experience in Kyiv, the goal is to collaborate with activists in other cities to enable them to set-up anti-corruption citywalks in, for instance, Kharkiv, Odessa or Lviv.

The practitioners module: Documenting corruption and anti-corruption activities in Ukraine

The practitioner module aims at linking the anti-corruption walk to the on-going developments in the field of anti-corruption. To achieve that, a institutionalized cooperation with existing anti-corruption NGOs will be established.

The academic module: Discussing the communication of (anti-)corruption

The academic component of the project aims at grounding the tour on state-of-the art (anti-) corruption research. For this, we will facilitate a two-three day academic conference in Kiev which brings together international and Ukrainian anti-corruption researchers and practitioners to discuss current research as well as practical experiences.