Economic Modeling for Community Recovery and Development
Is it possible to effectively plan recovery without understanding how the community will develop in the future? How can we forecast the capacities of social and critical infrastructure, which is built for decades, without prior assessments of the community’s demographic situation, economic potential, and development prospects? The Ukraine Support Team coalition and partners have begun working on an economic modeling project for the recovery and development of the Borodianka community to address this issue.
As part of the UST coalition’s work, we have extensively assisted communities in prioritizing their recovery needs. In the context of war and limited resources, rebuilding everything at once is an unattainable task and, in some cases, impractical. Is it worth investing millions in rebuilding a school for 600 students if we don’t know how many children will study there in five years? How many hospital beds should the new hospital have?
The recovery process cannot be limited to the physical rebuilding of what was destroyed. To bring people back home, it must focus on strengthening and developing the economy.
Together with the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) and the Saturday Team consulting company, using Borodianka as an example, we aim to create an algorithm that will help communities determine the most promising and priority pathways for their economic development and recovery.
“It is very difficult to assess what needs to be rebuilt and where to invest effort and funds first when there is no understanding of how the community will develop under different circumstances. That is why we have undertaken a new ambitious project — economic modeling for community recovery and development. By developing economic scenarios for Borodianka, we hope to create a kind of checklist for other communities: what they need to know about themselves; how to plan their future; determine what needs to be restored and proposed to donors and potential investors,” says the head of the coalition, Olena Koltyk.
With the support of the International Renaissance Foundation, our team conducts an analysis of the economic and demographic state of the Borodianka community over different periods, identifies systemic problems, and possible ways to solve them. We will also study global and national trends that will impact the long-term development of communities.
Based on this data, our experts will model economic development scenarios up to 2030 and test them with residents, business representatives, and other stakeholders, selecting the most promising and suitable for the community.
We are confident that this approach will allow local governments to build a more effective management strategy and establish better communication with donors and potential investors, ensuring the community increases its capacity and develops sustainably.
