This grant promotes environmental rights protection for citizens in Ukraine. Ecopravo-Lviv is a leading Western Ukrainian nongovernmental organization whose mission is to promote the environmental rights of citizens through advocacy, education, information, and legal assistance. Over the next two years, the grantee will: respond to citizen complaints and provide legal assistance; conduct six workshops for Ukrainian nongovernmental organizations and government officials on environmental rights protection, information access rights, access to justice, strategic environmental impact assessment, and other environmental topics; assist in drafting of environmental laws and adapting international instruments to the Ukrainian environmental legislation; and provide informational services through its environmental law library, Web site, and quarterly environmental advocacy newsletter.

The program goal is to engage residents from economically depressed settlements in eastern Ukraine in revitalizing their communities. Over the next two years, the Regional Development Agency "Donbass" will deepen its community development work in provincial population centers in order to strengthen the capacity of leading community-based organizations to effect social change. Activities will include training community leaders, convening public participation workshops, mapping community needs and resources, advising on local development projects, and promoting citizen participation in community life. In the previous grant period, the grantee established six community information centers to foster local civic participation. It facilitated the staging of "Citizen Participation Weeks" in four target communities as regular events. A new distance learning program focused on social development and participation was also instituted. Initiated in 1997, the agency supports the implementation of market reforms to assist transformation in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

The program goal is to strengthen the institutional capacity of the New Eurasia Foundation in the fields of civic engagement and community development and, as a consequence, to encourage the central role of citizen participation in such development efforts in Russia. To that end, the grantee will seek to integrate its work with community schools and universities into a more comprehensive vision of cross-sectoral partnerships for community development. Its Innovation Fund for Community Development will continue to shape and respond to community development priorities and opportunities through leveraged financial support. In 2009-2011, the grantee introduced and embedded community schools training methodologies into 13 teacher training institutes across Russia, and engaged 10 pilot universities in concrete efforts to support local community development. Established in 2003, the New Eurasia Foundation works to foster a broad range of cross-sectoral partnerships to assist in Russia's social and economic development.