Vadym Georgienko introduces an innovative democracy programme in Ukraine that offers real influence over how community funds are spent to those who get active in civic and community life, whether that’s by clearing leaves, planting greenery or knitting socks. Want to find out more about citizen tokens? Come to the online conference Citizen Capital: From Within next week, on June 12.
Most programmes supporting democratic participation continue to report solid results: trainings are delivered; consultations held; stakeholders “engaged”. And yet, from communities to countries, trust evaporates. Institutions hollow out. People vote, then revolt. The rituals remain but the vitality disappears – authoritarianism advances.
Why is that? And more importantly, why does it keep happening even when all the boxes are ticked?
A barrier to success
This goes much deeper than operational gaps. There is a fundamental conceptual barrier in the design of international democracy programmes, even as billions have been invested in their name. They focus on consequences while not paying enough attention to people’s sense that they have power – the core democratic value. They also underestimate the importance of motivation mechanisms for participation. This means public participation is too often reduced to formal consultations repackaged under various labels.
The result is that citizens feel a growing gap between themselves and democratic power, lack self-governance skills and remain vulnerable to paternalism and populism globally.
A positive civic loop
As a practical response to the ongoing crisis in democracy, a civic experiment, “Rudky’s CRF program”, has been going for 16 months in a rural Ukrainian community (Rudky) in the Lviv region of western Ukraine, funded by an initial investment of just 100,000 UAH (US$2,500) from the Global Fund for Community Foundations,
Local residents have become the main drivers of a regenerative loop. The model works like this: people contribute to collective needs through labour (see below), time or materials; in return they get citizen or governance tokens. They can use these citizen tokens, which we have called “PB tokens” (see explanation of the term below) to vote to allocate pooled resources to local businesses of their choice (more about those, including a bakery and butcher’s shop, in this Pioneers Post article). The entrepreneurs then return the capital to the community fund, restarting the cycle.
The scale may have been modest but the effect wasn’t: an investment of 100,000 UAH catalysed four decision-making cycles and over 1.26 million UAH (over $30,000) in public good value generated through 22 contracts based on people’s contributions. Specific examples of what people chose to support — and how they contributed, below.
| 1. Smart Contract – Project #35 (Playground Improvement): Participants could earn governance tokens in two ways: – Volunteer labor — for activities like clearing autumn leaves, repainting play structures, or planting greenery. A minimum of 2 hours earned 2 PB tokens. – Material contributions — by donating paint, plants, tools, or other supplies worth at least 150 UAH (~$4), a participant received 1 PB token. 2. Smart Contract – Project #3 “Warm Socks & Mats” (Support for Defenders): This project focused on helping local men — husbands, brothers, and sons — defending Ukraine on the frontline. Participants contributed through: – Crafting handmade items (knitting socks, weaving mats) – minimum 9 hours earned 3 PB tokens. – Donating materials like yarn or fabric (worth at least 150 UAH) earned 1 PB token. – Transporting finished items to their destination (e.g. military units) earned 3 PB tokens per trip. Each smart contract had clear criteria, was approved by the local hybrid team, and automatically linked people’s inputs to their share of decision-making power. Note: PB has a dual meaning: in Ukrainian it stands for “Розумна Взаємодія” (smart interactions); in English), “Participatory budgeting”. We decided to use the common term “PB-tokens”. |
More than 400 residents took part. Unlike traditional grant programmes, the model didn’t require ongoing donor input, as it generated its own next round of working capital.
The model was born in war conditions as communities faced delays in humanitarian aid, budget shortfalls, and loss of trust. This model emerged as a bottom-up way to rebuild trust, mobilise local capacity, and fill governance gaps, especially where national systems couldn’t.
In practice, many contributions supported war-affected families or local needs tied to the war: such as making thermal mats and socks for soldiers, or providing basic equipment to keep kindergartens running during blackouts caused by attacks.
The system runs on distributed civic action. It transforms fragmented participation into shared agency and generates real feedback. People can see how their actions shape outcomes. Entrepreneurs are selected not by a grant committee, but by communities using their own tokens to vote.
Up to 90% of voters later become customers of the businesses they had voted to invest in – not just endorsing, but actively supporting the entrepreneurs they selected, and helping to ensure timely return of capital to the community resilience fund.
Through repeated decision-making cycles, driven by the motivation of tokens and linked to tangible outcomes, residents strengthen their ability to govern local resources and priorities together – perhaps the best antidote to authoritarian drift. They also develop practical skills, values and readiness to engage in shared self-governance in community life.
A system to enhance civic life
We’re not sure exactly how to describe this project: a model, a protocol, or just a repeatable civic instinct.
But it behaves like a civic protocol: low-cost, repeatable, and able to coordinate real-world decisions under pressure. It is not a social franchise in the conventional sense but neither is it a blank canvas. It provides a replicable civic loop with built-in flexibility, designed to support local freedom to act without erasing structure. The real challenge lies in respecting both freedom and structure, avoiding both rigid replication and vague reinterpretation.
It’s fragile. It’s young. But it works, at least for now.
And it echoes key themes raised on this blog: everyday influence, distributed ownership, dynamic trust cycles and bottom-up governance.
We share this not as a finished framework, but as the start of a conversation. If your work involves rethinking power, ownership, or influence, it might be worth a closer look: because this system behaves like a living civic engine: evolving, adaptive and capable of regenerating itself under pressure.
If this resonates with you, you’re warmly invited to join the conversation. We’ll be exploring this further during our online conference Citizen Capital: From Within on June 12, 2025. If you’d like to join, you can register here.
Vadym Georgienko is the developer of the Citizen Token System (CTS), a civic framework for regenerating trust, participation, and local economies. He works with the informal partnership network “Smart Interactions”, bringing together local authorities, NGOs, and entrepreneurs, to support community resilience in war-affected Ukraine and contributes to the global #ShiftThePower movement.
This article is adapted from a post on LSE’s new Activism, Influencing and Change blog, run by FP2P’s Blogger Emeritus, Duncan Green.
Brilliant! A great example of a locally led solution…from ideas, to funding, to governance model and all through to sustainability.
Great to hear the local activists and the community step up to address their challenges, and applying by their own play/rule book.
Thank you Florence!