Possible Now: Growing something new when the old is crumbling

Stanislav Chernohor, Foundation for Community Development

In December, three people from our organization – the Foundation for Community Development (FCD) – will travel to Kathmandu for the Possible Now #ShiftThePower Global Summit. For us, this is not simply about participating in an international conference. The very fact that we are making this journey from Ukraine already says something about what Possible Now means to us, and how important it has become to us as an organization.

In Ukraine, men between the ages of 23 and 60 cannot freely leave the country during martial law without a legal basis. In my case, that basis is accompanying my wife, Inna, who has a disability. But Inna is not travelling with me only as a companion. She works as a consultant for FCD and is actively involved in our work, including supporting people with disabilities. The third member of our team who will be attending is Svitlana Oliinyk. Svitlana also attended the 2023 #ShiftThePower Global Summit in Bogotá. She has carried forward ideas from Bogotá, adapting them to our circumstances in Ukraine, which have changed profoundly in recent years.

Our story, so far

Our organization was born in 2012 in Kramatorsk, which is in the Northern part of the Donetsk region in Eastern Ukraine. We worked in Kramatorsk for more than ten years, building relationships with people, local authorities, as well as other organizations and partners. It was our home and our community. Though in March 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion, much of our staff relocated to Bar, a town in the Vinnytsia region in Western Ukraine. We started working their immediately, thanks in part to close cooperation with the Bari Community Foundation and other local NGOs. We were particularly focussed on assisting other internally displaced people (IDPs). As IDPs ourselves, we could understand what they were going through.

Towards the end of 2023, some of our staff returned to Kramatorsk. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, around 200,000 people lived in Kramatorsk and the surrounding urban area. Today, Russian missiles, drones and aerial bombs continue to strike the city, destroying homes, infrastructure and the urban environment. For those who remain in Kramatorsk, this is not statistics and it is not news. These are their homes, streets, schools, neighbours and the places where they lived much of their lives. For the staff of FCD, this is personal too. Due to the unrelenting conflict, on 1 September 2026, we were once again forced to stop operating from Kramatorsk. We moved the centre of our activities approximately 500 kilometres away, to Kropyvnytskyi. Though part of our team continues to work in Kharkiv, close to the Russian border, which remains a frontline city.

Back in June of this year, we had already understood that one day we might be forced to leave Kramatorsk again. We did not wait until that time became inevitable, and for months now we have been laying the foundations for our new activities in Kropyvnytskyi.

A garden starts to grow

Over the last months, we opened a community centre in Kropyvnytskyi for local residents and IDPs. It hosts workshops, consultations and sessions with psychologists. We created a choir that brings together local residents and IDPs – it already has 40 members. We also launched an accessible transport service. Our minibus helps people with limited mobility who have been displaced from other parts of the country reach social, administrative and medical services in Kropyvnytskyi.

At first glance, these may appear to be separate projects. But for us, they are something more: we are creating a new network of relationships. Through these efforts, people are getting to know one another. Local residents and IDPs are beginning to see themselves not as two separate groups, but as part of one community. New connections are emerging, along with new initiatives and new ways of helping one another.

“At first glance, these may appear to be separate projects. But for us, they are something more: we are creating a new network of relationships.”

What we have seen in these three months is the emergence of a new local ecosystem. This is where the metaphor of the garden mind, a central idea to Possible Now, becomes especially clear to me. A garden cannot be built in a day. It cannot be assembled according to instructions. You cannot simply bring a ready-made garden from somewhere else. It has to grow on its own.

When localization is only a label

Our experiences have also made us think deeply about the future of the international aid system. Today, resources for civil society development and humanitarian assistance are becoming harder to come by. The withdrawal of USAID support has been one of the most visible manifestations of this change. At the same time, significant resources continue to flow through government structures and large international organizations.

But there is often a huge distance between the way a system sees a problem and the way it is seen by a person who actually lives inside that problem. I am an IDP myself. So I speak not only as the head of a community foundation, I speak as someone who has personally found himself inside this system.

An older person forced to leave a war-affected city may receive around US $45 in additional government assistance per month. A pension of around US $90 a month is already considered relatively good by many people. Rent for a small one-bedroom apartment can cost around US $200 a month. Behind these numbers are people, who need somewhere to live, food and medicine, transport and the chance to begin their lives again.

So the question is not only how much money exists in the system. Another question is equally important: who decides where that money goes and how it is used? For many years, we have heard the word “localization.” But genuine localization still has not become a reality.

With most available resources continuing to be concentrated in large organizations, local organizations such as ours are often only offered small grants or asked to serve as implementing partners. Sometimes local organizations are effectively expected to provide free labour in exchange for a T-shirt with a donor’s logo, a firm handshake and a friendly pat on the shoulder: “You are great volunteers. Keep working.”

“Sustainable local civil society cannot be built on enthusiasm alone. People who have worked with communities for years, built trust and taken risks need more than recognition. They need real resources.”

We value volunteering. We ourselves have built much of our work on it for many years. But sustainable local civil society cannot be built on enthusiasm alone. People who have worked with communities for years, built trust and taken risks need more than recognition. They need real resources to develop their own organizations. For us, localization is therefore not simply about having local organizations implement projects designed by someone else. Localization should mean resources, decision-making power and the ability to set our own priorities. Otherwise, we are simply changing the implementer. We are not changing the system.

A local organization has one fundamental advantage: it stays, living within the community. It knows people as people – not just as names on beneficiary lists. It understands the local problems, realities and opportunities. When an international organization arrives in a community, it can do very important work. But sooner or later, its team will leave. A local organization remains, often living with the consequences of those international projects. It continues talking to people and answering the phone. It keeps dealing with new problems that could never have been anticipated in a project proposal. That is why local organizations should not be only implementers: they should be creators of solutions.

Trust, like a garden, needs nurturing

This is where the concept of Possible Now becomes especially important to us. For our organization, Possible Now is not just a slogan, but a way of looking at problems. Ever since our founding back in 2012, we have been working on things that at some point seemed impossible. We do not always know in advance what solutions will look like. But we can start looking for them today. This can sometimes involve the use of new technologies – but we also understand very clearly that though technology can accelerate our work, it can never replace trust between people.

Trust cannot be established by command: it cannot be bought with a grant and it cannot be created within a single project cycle. Returning to the garden metaphor, like a plant or a flower, trust has to be nurtured and grown over time. We also appreciate that different plants grow at different speeds. Some do not take root. Some things have to be replanted. Sometimes, unexpected new life appears. But it is precisely this diversity that makes a garden alive.

When we relocated to Kropyvnytskyi, people there did not know us yet. We had to build trust almost from scratch. But we decided not to see this only as a loss – it was also an opportunity to experiment. We are not mechanically transferring our model from Kramatorsk to Kropyvnytskyi. We are listening to people, trying to understand what they actually need. We are trying, making mistakes, and changing our approach. We will always try again.

I already mentioned the small ecosystem that we are building in Kropyvnytskyi. While it is small, it is already alive – and it did not emerge because we had a perfect plan. It emerged because we thought about what was Possible Now, and then started acting.

From separate islands to a shared path, one step at a time

Returning to why we are so looking forward to being in Kathmandu in December, we believe this is because local organizations need to connect with one another. Not only within a city, a region or a country. We should be thinking more broadly than that. Ukrainian organizations should connect with their counterparts in Nepal, Kenyan organizations should know their peers in Indonesia, etc. We can exchange knowledge, solutions and experiences, and will be all the richer for having done so.

Such experiences help local organizations to become stronger and more confident, strengthening their standing within their own communities and, gradually, changing the way we understand what a local organization is. Not merely as implementors, recipients of small grants nor as volunteers in free T-shirts – but, rather, as an active and important participant in global civil society.

“Our individual experiments should be part of a larger process. Perhaps all we need is to connect these separate islands, and to try to do together what seems impossible when we work separately.”

So we are travelling to Kathmandu in search of new connections, ideas and partnerships. But above all, we are going for people. For encounters with those who are in similar situations, who are also looking for new paths. And to meet others who understand that the old system is crumbling, and can no longer simply be restored. Those at the Summit will be from different countries, working on completely different problems. But our individual experiments should be part of a larger process. Perhaps all we need is to connect these separate islands, and to try to do together what seems impossible when we work separately.

The journey of FCD has not been easy. But we found a way, and perhaps that is the essence of Possible Now. Not everything is possible all at once, and not everything is possible in the old, familiar ways. But there is always a next step we can take.

By: Stanislav Chernohor, Head of NGO, Foundation for Community Development