#speakup barometer | Ukraine
Innovative digital projects to watch in Ukraine
Ukraine has a world-class IT sector and a very active civil society that is driving innovation.
IT, CivTec, Co-Working Spaces
Spilnokosht
With a focus on venture philanthropy and social innovation, Spilnokosht, (Ukrainian for "common means") is a crowdfunding platform that supports the financing of social enterprises for a more open society.
UNIT.City
Based in a former industrial area just outside of Kyiv, UNIT.City is Ukraine's first innovation park. As an incubator for the capital's startup scene, UNIT.City's goal is to become the entry point for investors to Ukraine, thereby helping young people to stay in Ukraine.
Impact Hub Odessa
Part of the worldwide Impact Hub network, the Impact Hub in Odessa is a co-working space that hosts initiatives working for social innovation in education, health, and ecology, as well for people with disabilities. It assists them in finding business models and support within civil society.
https://impacthub.odessa.ua/impact/
Openbudget
Openbudget monitors public spending in the part of the Donbass region controlled by Ukrainian authorities and compiles a transparency ranking for city budgets.
Kotyky
Ukrainian for "cats," Kotyky is a platform that brings together volunteers and charities. To link them, Kotyky has created its own currency: cats. Volunteers donate their labor, thereby earning 'cats' which they can then exchange for real money donations to charities. As of June 2019, 61,998 cats have been earned by 7,352 volunteers upon completion of 1,702 tasks.
Bihus.info
On Kotyky.org.ua, many tasks are created by Bihus.Info, a collection of anti-corruption and informational projects. Among them:
Nashi hroshi, Ukrainian for "our money," is an investigative journalism program looking into corruption, which aired on the 24 Kanal TV station and public broadcaster UA:PBC.
Deklaratsii is a project that collates the tax return information of Ukrainian politicians and civil servants and makes them full-text searchable. It was started in 2014 when the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice published these tax returns for the first time.
https://bihus.info/projects/deklaracii
Urban Space 500
A restaurant and event space just a few minutes away from Maidan Square in the heart of Kyiv, Urban Space 500 is a project crowdsourced by Kyiv's civil society. It aims to develop a physical platform to mobilize the city’s proactive base. While it has become an important space for personal meetings and events within Kyiv's creative scene, its profits are intended to finance social projects and start-ups focused on urban development. Urban Space 500 shares the building with a co-working space on the upper floors
http://urbanspace500.com.ua/uk
Co-working spaces
There are so many co-working spaces in Kyiv that one represents the many here.
IZONE creative community
The IZone creative community aims to stimulate the local economy by supporting cultural initiatives, social integration and cooperation. IZone was founded in 2010 in Donetsk and moved to Kyiv at the start of the war in the Donbass region in 2014. It supports people working in the arts, the creative industry, and the tech sector.
Media
Ukrainska Pravda
One of the oldest and still most popular news portal in Ukraine, founded 2000 by Georgi Gongandze.
U choose
U choose uses interactive formats like quizzes and games to talk about – among other issues – politics, elections, language, and media and information literacy. It promises to "talk about complex topics, not look for simple solutions."
The Ukrainians
The Ukrainians defines its mission as "making positive social change possible with the help of the instruments of journalism." Reporting on success stories, it is aimed at a young and active audience.
https://theukrainians.org
Nakipelo
Nakipelo is a local media outlet in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, with a strong focus on civil society. The project was founded in the wake of the Maidan protests by activists and has professionalized since then. In Kharkiv, where high-quality local journalism is rare, Nakipelo is working to find new ways of doing local journalism.
Platfor.ma
Platfor.ma is an independent online media outlet reporting on innovation and culture founded in 2010. With Ukraine's creative community as a target group, its mission is to report on new ideas in order to help foster change and motivate people to make progress. It does so by using highly innovative formats.
Pyotr I Mazepa (Peter and Mazeppa)
Pyotr I Mazepa is an independent online media outlet that wants to report "what is happening in the country and in the world, sincerely and with a human voice." It prides itself on doing so from the subjective point of view of its authors.
Zaborona
Zaborona practices slow-journalism by engaging in multimedia storytelling, publishing cartoons, videos, and documentaries. Its mission is to counteract conservative tendencies and the polarization of society.
StopFake.org
Started in 2014 by a group of journalists, university lecturers, coders and translators, StopFake is Ukraine's best known fact checking project, debunking and analyzing Russian propaganda and disinformation. Today, StopFake publishes in 11 languages.
Texty.org.ua
Texty.org.ua is a data journalism resource that specializes in interactive visualizations.
Vox Ukraine
Voxukraine.org, an independent analytical platform, was founded after the 2014 revolution by a group of economists and lawyers. It publishes analyses of economic processes and the most important developments in and around Ukraine. Its projects include DataVox, which studies the activity of Ukrainian parliamentarians using mathematical methods and numerical data, and VoxCheck, a fact checking service – and the first publication of its type in modern Ukraine.
Have we missed something or someone shaping Ukraine's digital future?
Email us at barometer@dw.com.
Summer media camp for jounalists in Cherkassy, Ukraine
The #speakup barometer is a DW Akademie project that examines the connection between digital participation, freedom of expression and access to information. Learn more at www.dw.com/barometer
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- Date 01.07.2019
- Author Erik Albrecht
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- Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3LPeu
- Date 01.07.2019
- Author Erik Albrecht
- Send us your feedback.
- Print Print this page
- Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/3LPeu
