Curator’s report 2020–2021
Intro
Hey, I’m Max Semenchuk. For more than 6 years I’m a part of the Global Shapers Kyiv Hub community. I’ve been an elected curator and served 2 prior years as a vice curator. I’d like to share the updates we had in this (2020–2021) term with the team, partners and potential shapers.
Who are these “shakers”?
The Global Shapers Community is a network of Hubs led by young people between 20 and 30 years old who are exceptional in their potential, their achievements and their drive to make a contribution to their communities, is an initiative of the World Economic Forum.
Shapers is one of the best communities I know. Besides huge support for the work, i’ve found a lot of life friends and even the best man for my wedding there =) With all the love attached, I saw the hub going through hard times lately — low engagement, lack of unity and cohesion. Previously too much attention was put in producing work and projects. Most shapers want to build a prominent and effective hub, though the approach was rather a push than a pull. Most shapers are already super busy with their projects and additional stress wasn’t helping much.
So that made focus just on one thing — internal relations. I believe that great projects and impact are possible only in a capable and bonded team. Now finishing my term i feel us becoming much stronger. We managed to grow the capacity, build processes and partner ties.
Our starting research
Every good project starts with research. Together with my brilliant co-curator Dim Zarazhevsky we did a set of interviews with all active shapers. It was more time consuming but gave us a much better picture in the end. Here’s what we found:
Our strengths
- Prominent and open people
- International network and events
- Small, but regular projects on relevant topics (mostly youth-related)
- Facilitated and transparent governance
Weaknesses
- Shapers’ time and commitment (have only few hours now and then)
- Onboarding (few people read guides, many ask same questions, don’t know the history)
- Recruitment is detached with the hub goals
- Still lack diversity in some parts
Opportunities
- Stronger and more recognized brand
- More partnerships (eg with AIESEC — we have 7 members from there)
- More impact with our projects
- Cross-hub collaboration
Risks
- Covid (economy, online communications)
What we achieved
Impact
The term started just after the covid outbreak, where many shapers united to support our local communities. Lockdown isolation and intense work affected all of us (maybe even led to a spark in our informal meetings). So we mostly focus on capacity building and strategy.
Of course, as we’re young and should be the voice of the youth to the WEF we’ve focused on the young audience doing projects like:
- Future skills program for pupils ProFuture Camp
- Continuation of the Global Insights: Emotional Intelligence for Teams and Communities and
- How to invest in thyself
Also with every year we have more people working in the government field. We advise projects and form coalitions. One of such is the Agents of digitalization where we’re currently building a framework to measure impact from digitalization for cities and communities.
Better agreements
Currently, we have a constantly growing knowledge base that includes mission and vision statements, all meetups and project summaries, lots of guides and valuable info. It should be a good contribution to governance continuity.
Another big win is a community charter that describes rules and obligations of the hub members. This is one of the best practices brought by Olha Stoliarchuk from her role as a Community Champion for our bigger region.
Growing together
As shapers are the best we have we saw an opportunity to develop each other through the experience sharing and microlearning sessions. Thanks to Roma Dyma we started the buddy programs where shapers found a partner for a month to know each other better, learn and support. That helped us to discover rules and tools for being wise in chaos and building initiatives.
Another innovation was a Bootcamp — a series of calls with new and old shapers to get through everything then need to know: who are we and what we want to achieve, how we will do that and where you can help. It got a very positive feedback so hopefully we can continue doing that.
Building the network
This year shapers celebrate 10 years anniversary. For these years more than 400 hubs were created in the cities worldwide. We took part in few initiative connected to climate action, capacity building and cross hub collaborations.
One of the highlights was of course our all-Ukraine retreat held in Carpathians. We climbed one of the tallest peaks, rafted, explored Ukrpromprylad and beautiful Ivano Frankivsk together with 3 other hubs. That didn’t stop there and a bunch of new meetups are one the go from this friendship.
Having fun
Last but not least we had a lot of “quality time” together. Travelling through all of our Ukraine, cultural events (urbanist tours, jazz etc), sports, parties — we got it all. Our informal meetings are a backbone to trust and enjoyment in the hub. Just check out the photos:
Having a shapers’ place
Working in cafes is ok for some time, but we were really looking for a place where we can brainstorm and hold our bigger events. Thanks to our alumni shaper Svitlana Nemesh we finally got our home at a super modern and nicely located Peremoga Space.
Thanks
Thanks to shapers
- Dim Zarazhevsky, Olha Stoliarchuk, Roman Dyma, Uliana Avtonomova, Anton Shulyk, Vitalii Zakhozhyi, Ievgeniia Bodnya, Diana Daiub, Olya Bezverkha, Yelysaveta Demydenko, Anastasiya Klysakova, Sviatoslav Sviatnenko
- Newcoming Anastasiya Boshko, Daniil Lubkin, Daryna Kulaga, Karolina Inhinova, Maria Gavryliuk, Misha Rudominski, Alyona Mysko
- Alumnus Dima Kostik, Svitlana Nemesh
Thanks to our partners
- GS Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv Hubs
- Ukraine Global Scholars
- Peremoga Space
- FRI (ФРІ)
- Impact ua
Globals Shapers is a unique and versatile opportunity to build more impact together with people like you. Join our community to
- Meet cool, funny, versatile and expert people
- Develop your social project to the international level
- Take part in our quality time (Travel, Leisure, Education)
The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.
Apply and learn more at https://globalshapers.kyiv.ua/
