RFA Ukraine: new partner municipality selection, 23 August

The Recovery for All (RFA) project has opened a new selection round for partner municipalities in Ukraine. The team accepts applications until 23 August 2026 inclusive.

Canada funds the project, and Alinea International runs it. Because the support format is technical assistance, a selected municipality gets experts, training and mentoring. The project transfers no funds into a municipal account.

So far RFA works with 23 municipalities across 8 Ukrainian regions. Since the project targets 50 municipalities by 2031, every new selection round fills part of that quota.

What the RFA project is and who funds it

Recovery for All started in February 2025 and will run until March 2031. According to the Government of Canada grants and contributions registry, the agreement with Alinea International is worth about CAD 24.7 million over 7 years.

The donor here is Global Affairs Canada. At national level, RFA also works with Ukraine’s Ministry of Development of Communities and Territories, specifically on ProjectUA, the digital planning system that lets the government track delivery of the Ukraine Plan under the Ukraine Facility.

The logic of the project is simple. People who live in a municipality plan its recovery, while external experts supply method, data and training. In addition, the project design pays separate attention to women, people with disabilities, veterans, internally displaced people and older residents.

What a partner municipality gets

RFA published the full list of support areas in the announcement itself. The list is broad, so a municipality can pick several tracks at once.

Development strategy and action plan

The core of the partnership is a municipal Development Strategy for 2028-2034 together with an Action Plan for its delivery. First, RFA helps write these documents from scratch or update existing ones. After that, if the strategy is already approved, the project supports its rollout.

This is exactly where municipalities usually fail. A strategy that a contractor drafts in 2 weeks and then leaves in a drawer gives the municipality no advantage, because both state funding and donor calls ask applicants to show how a project connects to municipal strategic goals.

Project office and fundraising capacity

RFA also supports the creation of project offices and improves the ones that already exist. Then comes training and mentoring for the team: how to find partners, how to attract money, how to carry recovery projects through to completion.

In practice this is the part that keeps working after the Canadians leave. A project office that has learned to write applications and administer grants serves the municipality for years. Once the first grants arrive, teams normally move to dedicated tools, for example KanriFlow for EU consortium projects.

Public services and the local economy

The second large block covers specific services. RFA lists day care for children with disabilities, residential care for people who cannot look after themselves, primary health care including coordinated care models, veteran policy, inclusive education in schools through teacher support, and non-standard solutions in preschool education such as mobile and mini kindergartens.

Local economy initiatives form a separate track. For municipalities under 20,000 residents this often decides survival, because people do not come back to rebuilt houses without jobs.

Who can apply

This round covers 7 regions only: Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Odesa, Poltava, Kharkiv and Chernihiv. Rural, settlement and urban territorial municipalities can apply if their population was under 20,000 as of 1 January 2026.

Substantive criteria

• the municipality has no Development Strategy for 2028-2034 and no Action Plan, or these documents need updating;
• the municipality wants to draft or update its Development Strategy;
• the municipality needs further comprehensive support with strategy delivery and recovery;
• the request covers long-term recovery beyond urgent humanitarian needs;
• the municipality is ready to improve resident access to health care, education, social welfare and services for veterans and their families, and also to strengthen the local economy.

Security restriction

RFA states directly that it can only work with municipalities outside the FPV drone strike zone and outside areas under regular or sustained attack that threaten safety or block delivery. As a result, part of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk region municipalities cannot take part, so read that wording carefully before filling in the form.

Who signs the documents

Only a representative of a local self-government body or a military administration can submit the application. Applicants also attach a support letter carrying the signature of the head of the municipality or the head of the military administration. Specifically, that letter must confirm readiness to join the project and meet its conditions, justify the need for support, and name a coordinator with full name, position, phone number and email.

How to apply and what happens next

The conditions and the full list of support areas sit on the official RFA announcement page. Applicants fill in the submission form until 23 August 2026 inclusive.

Before applying, it makes sense to join the online info session on 13 August at 14:00. There the project team walks through participation conditions and the partnership format, and then answers questions. Registration goes through a separate form.

After that the calendar looks like this. Municipalities that pass the first screening go through interviews in mid-September, and the team announces results by the end of September. So roughly 5 weeks pass between the deadline and the decision.

RFA warns separately that the quality, completeness and reasoning of the answers affect the outcome, and the project may reject applications that break the selection rules. In practice, the form needs numbers, named services and a clear reason why this particular municipality can carry a strategy through to delivery. Generic lines such as “we need support with recovery” lower the score.

For questions about the selection, the team asks people to write to rfa@alineainternational.com.