Anna Storgaard
June 17, 2026
2026 Ramboll Foundation Award goes to Ukrainian housing NGO CO‑HATY
The Ramboll Foundation has elected CO‑HATY, a Ukrainian non‑profit housing organisation, as the recipient of the Ramboll Foundation Award 2026 and will award a grant of DKK 500,000 dedicated to learning, documentation, and knowledge dissemination.
CO‑HATY was established in 2022 within METALAB and Urban Curators to respond to urgent housing needs for people displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The organisation has evolved from improving emergency shelters to converting vacant and underutilised buildings into long‑term, affordable rental housing in close cooperation with municipalities and public stakeholders.
Our work began by improving emergency shelters, but we quickly realised that people need durable homes and civic solutions, not temporary fixes. This award and the grant will let us turn accumulated practice into shared knowledge, evaluating resident outcomes, formalising our model, and producing open‑access guidance so municipalities and civil society across Ukraine and beyond can replicate regenerative, community‑led housing
Creating real-life impact
CO-HATY’s approach integrates physical renovation with social measures — community building, transparent resident selection, and long‑term housing security — and places emphasis on material reuse, energy upgrades, and community programmes.
Among many critical initiatives CO-HATY has:
- Upgraded living conditions in 21 emergency shelters across three regions, benefiting over 2,000 people.
- Completed 11 long‑term housing projects providing stable homes for approximately 1,800 people, with representative projects including Shypynky (Vinnytsia region), Horodok (Khmelnytsk region), and Kalush (Ivano‑Frankivsk region). Projects integrate measures such as heat pumps, material reuse targets (~30% secondary inputs), accessibility features, and community gardens.
What the grant will be used for
The Ramboll Foundation Award grant of DKK 500,000 will be used to strengthen CO‑HATY’s capacity to generate and share applied knowledge from its practice. Apart from this, Ramboll experts in Ukraine and elsewhere will consult and assist CO‑HATY in their projects and further development.
CO-HATY plans to use the funding to increase the resilience and sustainability of their projects and further develop their operating model - including financing, tenant selection, community governance, social tariff mechanics, and construction approaches – into a general and scalable methodology that they can scale and share internationally.
We are very proud to recognise CO‑HATY as the recipient of the Ramboll Foundation Award 2026 and are thrilled to be collaborating with them on housing and sustainability in Ukraine. Their practical, regenerative approach to transforming vacant buildings into long‑term affordable homes exemplifies perfectly our mission of regenerative rebuilding. We hope to see CO-HATY’s impact grow and learnings from their projects inform policy and practice during reconstruction.
Combining funding, purpose, and expertise
With CO-HATY’s local expertise and presence combined with the funding of the Ramboll Foundation’s fund and the expertise of Ramboll experts, we are able scale results and impact.
Strengthened evidence base on resident outcomes: The grant will fund structured resident impact evaluations (wellbeing, economic integration, community cohesion), generating rigorous, transferable data on what spatial and social interventions actually achieve. This evidence can improve project design and support advocacy for including civil society-led social housing in national reconstruction policy.
Formalisation and replicability of the CO‑HATY model: Funding to document tenant selection, community governance, social tariff mechanics and construction approaches will translate tacit experience into an open‑access methodology usable by other NGOs and municipalities, increasing scalability and uptake.
Improved technical performance and standards: Collaboration with Ramboll expertise (infrastructure, building performance, sustainable construction) can strengthen evaluation of long‑term energy and environmental performance of projects and raise technical standards for future rehabilitations.
Institutional strengthening and sustainability: Translating experience into formal methods and demonstrating financially sustainable cases (e.g., Kalush) supports CO‑HATY’s ambition to become an institutional backbone for civil society-led social housing and reduce donor dependency through social tariff mechanics and municipality arrangements.
About CO-HATY
Year of establishment, place: 2022, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine
Number of projects finished: 10 finished projects and more than 16,000 sq. meters renovated
Number of people provided housing: Approximately 2000 people have been provided with housing
Number of city/Hromada cooperations: Approximately 10 hromadas in progress
Creating real-life impact
Anna Pashynska, Architect, co-founder METALAB, CO-HATY
Tania Pashynska, co-founder of CO-HATY, is preparing the room in Shypynky, CO-HATY's 8th building, before opening
Before opening in Shypynky, CO-HATY's 8th building
Iryna Yakovchuk with guests and partners during the opening of the Zirochka complex in Kalush
Shared kitchen in a newly renovated complex in Kalush, 2026
About the Ramboll Foundation Award
The Ramboll Foundation Award is an annual award of DKK 500,000 (EUR/USD 67,000) awarded to a deserving researcher or organisation to support a particular field of expertise. Institutions or Ramboll projects are excluded, as are Ramboll’s own employees.
This year, the topic of the award is “regenerative redesign”, which aims to support practice‑based solutions that can inform broader rebuilding efforts, create visibility for regenerative approaches, and help operationalise our first philanthropic mission through engagement in a post‑conflict context.
Candidates for the Ramboll Foundation Award are identified by Ramboll experts and invited to submit a proposal. The award decision will be taken by an evaluation committee consisting of representatives from the Ramboll Foundation and Ramboll experts within the subject matter.
Last year’s award was given to Doctor of Law and Senior Lecturer of the University of Malawi, Dr. Ngcimezile Mweso, for her research on environmental justice in carbon sequestration projects in Malawi. Dr. Mweso’s work stands out for integrating social equity into climate action.