Attachments
Introduction
On the 17th of April, the East Hub team of the Shelter Cluster conducted a monitoring visit with Shelter Cluster partners on rehabilitation of Collective Centres. The purpose of this monitoring mission was to gather lessons learned and good practices from the Refurbishment of Collective Sites activity that would benefit partners of the Shelter Cluster for their future interventions. The Shelter Cluster team would like to thank the city authorities, including Bilous Serhii Volodymyrovych, Deputy Director for Social Housing and Administrative Affairs of Zaporozhremservice, Mikhailova Oksana Ivanovna, Leading Engineer of Zaporozhremservice, as well as partners Rokada, Caritas Zaporizhzhia, Save the Children International, and UNHCR, for their availability and willingness to participate in the monitoring visit. Special thanks are also extended to the Cluster Lead Agency - UNHCR for the continued support to shelter coordination.
The mission team had opportunity to speak with beneficiaries who live in the collective sites to find out how the performed repair works have affected their living conditions, to discuss with the managers of the collective sites the specifics of interaction with humanitarian organizations when performing such interventions and to discover the techniques that were used by the organization when performing the activity. All collected observations, feedback, and recommendations have been consolidated and are presented in this report.
The following Collective Sites were visited:
• CS on the base of Zaporizhzhia Construction Professional College
• CS on the base of the hotel of Municipal Enterprise “Zaporozhremservice”
• CS on the base of dormitory No. 6 of Zaporizhzhia National University
• CS on the base of the dormitory of the Municipal Institution of Higher Education “Khortytska National Training and Rehabilitation Academy” of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Council
According to the CCCM Cluster from data shared in March 2025, Zaporizhzhia City has sixty-six (66) Collective Site that are hosting 4190 IDPs. As of October 2024, through the CCCM Cluster Site Profiling 47 of these sites had been identified as having various repair needs. Between September to present day, 32 sites have had various repair and rehabilitation interventions conducted by Shelter Cluster partners. The various sites visited on the monitoring visit highlight that many of the residents of collective centres in Zaporizhzhia City are from occupied areas of the Oblast including Berdiansk, Melitopol and several frontline hromadas including Orihivska and Huliapolska hromadas with a few evacuees from southern parts of Donetska Oblast. Several collective centres reported that residents living in the center had tried to live in the west of Ukraine but returned due to the need to feel closer to home and not being able to adapt and find durable solutions in western Ukraine.
On average, initial assessments of Collective Centres began in August and September. However, the actual work for repairing and rehabilitating these Centres did not start until the winter months.
This delay was attributed to several factors: internal approval procedures, the need to deduplicate planned interventions among UHF partners, and challenges experienced with contractors, including conscription issues.
During the mission, discussions were held with CS managers on alternatives for Collective Sites (CS) and longer-term solutions. It was mentioned that several IDPs who were now residents of these centres had returned from displacement to the West and were trying to stay within the Oblast as they were not able to integrate into the West. Programs such as Rental Assistance were not considered ideal due to the short timeline of six months, as residents didn’t think they could sustain the affordability of alternative accommodation beyond the end of the six- or seven-month period. With no prospective changes in the status quo and limited options for alternative accommodation elsewhere in the region, rehabilitation of collective centres to ensure minimum habitable living standards remains a priority humanitarian intervention for Zaporizka Oblast.