Cleaning up the Environment

As the Ukrainian people emerged from Soviet rule, where economic goals often trumped ecological concerns, they were left with widespread and severe air and water pollution, toxic and hazardous waste, and few established ways to deal with these issues. Under communism, the government had most often handled communal issues, and so ordinary people, local government, businesses, and nonprofits had no history of taking matters into their own hands, and scarce resources with which to do so.

While ISC's work in Ukraine has resulted in many real benefits to the environment, our legacy is really helping people and communities work together to solve their most pressing problems-and bringing untold donations of time, money, and goods and services to the task. At the same time, we focused on leaving behind trainers and infrastructure to support our work long into the future. All told, ISC and nine communities:

• Eliminated 80 illegal dumps totaling 943 tons of waste.
• Removed 28.6 tons of unidentified pesticides and herbicides from 11 former collective farms.
• Established separate collection systems for recyclables that diverted 25 tons of material from waste dumps.
• Renovated wastewater treatment facilities in 4 communities.
• Expanded waste collection and management systems in 4 communities to 35,200 additional customers.
• Gave 90,300 people access to clean drinking water through renovated or newly constructed wells.
• Installed high quality drinking water supply systems in 22 public schools, reaching 9,000 students.
• Results were shared with 6,000 Ukrainian communities.

ISC also helped create permanent institutions, including a network of 106 nonprofits and local governments working on environmental issues. We also equipped the Volyn Resource Center and the Institute for Communities Development (founded by ISC's Ukrainain staff) to offer training and guidance on environmental issues well into the future.