The municipality of Dubno, Rivne oblast, entered into a Partnership Agreement with the city of Oxford, Ohio, US. The document was signed by Vasyl Antoniuk, Mayor of Dubno, and William Snavely, Mayor of Oxford.

This was announced on the social media page of the Dubno City Council.

Dubno and Oxford connected as part of the Sister Cities International (SCI) programme thanks to US Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine Geoffrey Glenn, who worked in Dubno from 2016 to 2018, and Geoffrey Hartman, a representative of the charity Ukrainian Action, mediated by Mykola Mandziuk, Head of the Dubno Municipality Foundation “Dobrobut”.

The cities plan to cooperate in the educational, economic and cultural spheres. The parties agreed to support and encourage opportunities for mutually beneficial exchanges in arts, culture, health care, science, education, tourism and business.

“Partnership with Oxford opens up many opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation. I hope that such cooperation will be productive and useful both for our city and for Oxford,” said Vasyl Antoniuk.

Decentralization reminds that municipalities of Ukraine can use the International Municipal Partnership Guidelines to build communication with foreign municipalities and enter into twinning agreements. These Guidelines offer algorithms and practical advice on establishing a partnership, cases of successful partnerships, practical advice on customs clearance and accounting of various types of assistance that partners can exchange, information on how to choose partners, how to organise the work of competent professionals or division, as well as information on financing, bookkeeping and reporting and a lot of other useful information.

Based on these Guidelines, the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine developed the Partnership for Recovery and Development section of the Decentralization national portal, with the support of DECIDE (Decentralisation for Improved Democratic Education), a Swiss-Ukrainian project, and the U-LEAD with Europe Programme.

These Guidelines are based on the methodology of the Council of Europe, City to City Cooperation, and developed by the Council of Europe as part of the Programme “Decentralisation and Public Administration Reform in Ukraine” at the request of the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine.