The Impact of Non-Governmental Organizations on the Resilience Potential of Territorial Communities in Ukraine

Abstract

The relevance of studying non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ukraine is determined by their significance in enhancing the resilience potential of local communities within limited timeframes and constrained resource availability. The purpose of the article is to reveal the impact of NGOs as an effective tool for improving the adaptive capacities and self-organization abilities of community groups on the resilience potential of territorial communities, mitigating destructive consequences, and accelerating their recovery during and after the Russian-Ukrainian war. With the escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict into a full-scale war in 2022, significant shifts have been observed in the prosocial behavior of citizens and the social structure of Ukrainian civil society. These shifts are characterized by increased cohesion and consolidation among the population, driven by the transformation of individual perspectives and institutional adaptation in high-risk conditions, as well as a revitalization of cooperation among civil institutions. The study of the impact of NGOs on the resilience potential of territorial communities was conducted using the systemic approach method, techniques of abstraction and generalization, functional and comparative analysis, statistical methods and data analysis, as well as the graphical method. Correlation-regression analysis was also applied: indicators that determine the resilience potential of the country’s local communities were selected based on the criteria of significance and the presence of a cause-and-effect relationship, including local budget revenues per capita, household monetary incomes, and the number of informally employed individuals as an indicator of the shadow economy. The results of the correlation-regression analysis confirmed the existence of a positive dependence between the amount of local budget revenues per capita and the number of public and charitable organizations. This finding allows for the assertion that local budget revenues increase as the number of organizations grows, due to the heightened public activity of residents, increased social responsibility of businesses, reduced corruption, and decreased mistrust among community members. It was substantiated that a low level of civic engagement, formed based on closed networks and information communications, exacerbates material gap, status differentiation, and income inequality in the community. In the conditions of war, residents’ affiliation with formal and informal communication channels of public organizations increases citizens’ employment opportunities. As the number of NGOs in a territorial community increases, the communication network and trust among residents become more developed, and socially responsible behavior among the population rises. It enhances the probability of official employment for the unemployed, as confirmed by the results of the correlation-regression analysis between the number of informally employed individuals and the number of public and charitable organizations. DOI: https://doi.org/10.53486/dri2024.42; UDC: 061.2:352(477); JEL: L31, D73, O18, O19