The Blaho for Communities digital platform developed by Epicentr and Itera will launch in October
Epicentr, in collaboration with the Norwegian IT company Itera and Itera Ukraine, has developed the Blaho for Communities digital platform, which is scheduled to launch in October, according to Epicentr's press service told Interfax-Ukraine.
The platform aims to change the approach to financing humanitarian aid and recovery projects. Usually, when donors provide funding, a portion of the funds is spent on administrative and operational costs. In the case of Blaho, every contribution goes directly to the project itself, ensuring maximum efficiency, transparency, and accountability. This allows international donors to purchase Ukrainian goods rather than import aid from abroad.
“Blaho is developed with a particular focus on small towns and rural communities, where recovery is most needed by people in vulnerable situations. This makes every contribution meaningful — whether it is renovating a school, setting up a resilience center, or rebuilding local infrastructure. Technologically, it is an example of a modern IT solution applied to one of the most pressing challenges of today: the recovery of Ukraine,” explained Iryna Shynkarenko, Deputy Head of Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, and Media at Epicentr K LLC.
She recalled that since the beginning of the war, the company has been working with a similar model using Blaho certificates: donors pay for goods that go directly to people affected by the war. In particular, the Blaho certificate program has been used by IOM, UN Women, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and others, with tens of thousands of Ukrainians receiving assistance.
The launch of the Blaho for Communities platform was announced in July 2025 during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome.
As explained to Interfax-Ukraine, unlike DREAM, which focuses on strategic planning and investment projects, Blaho for Communities is a platform designed for small towns and rural communities. It enables communities to directly present their needs and receive support from donors — ranging from international organizations to businesses and individuals — while allowing donors to fund specific requests with full transparency and digital tracking. Testing was conducted in the summer, and the Blaho for Communities platform will be open to the public in October.
“During the testing phase, we worked with real requests from communities to see how the platform would function in practice. One example was a project in the Khmelnytskyi region aimed at restoring social infrastructure in rural areas affected by the war. This case provided valuable experience and feedback from the community, which allowed us to improve the application submission logic and the moderation process,” explained Oleksandra Starykova, product manager of the Blaho for Communities project at Itera.
Projects currently being processed include constructing protective structures, establishing resilience centers for internally displaced persons, and other initiatives to rebuild critical infrastructure and support local populations. These applications come from communities across the Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kyiv, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“From day one, Blaho will provide a full cycle: from community applications to donor support and transparent monitoring of results,” says Starykova.
Once a community submits a project to Blaho, it undergoes several levels of verification. First, the system automatically checks the application for completeness and compliance with basic requirements. It considers the relevance and urgency of the problem the project addresses; the social impact on the community; the clarity and feasibility of the budget; and compliance with principles of transparency and accountability. A separate check ensures that the project has no commercial interest or business involvement — only initiatives aimed at solving real community problems are supported. Another mandatory condition is approval by the local council or government authorities, confirming the legitimacy of the request. Finally, with the support of the platform's partners, in particular the Club of Mayors of Ukraine, additional verification and approval take place. The platform is open to all communities wishing to submit their projects.
The Epicentr Group of Companies is an omnichannel ecosystem that brings together the Epicentr and Nova Linia retail chains, the Epicentrk.ua online store, the Epicentr-Agro agricultural holding, the Epicentr Ceramic Corporation tile manufacturing plants, the Osmoloda woodworking enterprise, and its logistics facilities. As of September 2025, the retailer's network includes 72 shopping centers across Ukraine.
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs, the participants of Epicenter K LLC are Oleksandr Gerega (51.3%), Halyna Gerega (47.97%), and Tetiana Surzyk (0.73%).
Itera is a Scandinavian IT company specializing in sustainable digital transformation. It operates in eight countries, including Ukraine, and provides services in artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, data analytics, and digital design.