Project title: Community Forum Program
Objectives and results of the action: Overall objective of the Community Forum Program was to support the participatory development of communities on local level. The Forum is a developmental platform aiming at (1) citizens improving their own life by means of own ideas and participation; and 2) the administration developing participatory and accountable local governance that can be trusted.
Specific objectives were:
- encouraged citizens’ participation in decision making processes at local level;
- building partnerships amongst local stakeholders for determining and resolving common needs and local social problems that community face;
- empowered citizens for participation in preparation and elaboration of project ideas and strategies for improvement of local, social and economic environment, and
- developed local administration capacity in terms of decentralization, participative democracy and cooperation with CSOs and citizens.
Target group were citizens, CSOs and local self-government. The realized activities were tailor-made trainings/consultancies for local self-government (administration, CSOs, Units of LSG and local initiative groups) provided to stimulate development of local communities through organizational strengthening and increased citizens’ participation. Also, technical assistance for realisation of the selected projects has been provided. These activities were realized in the form of Community Forum, Budgetary Forums and Inter-municipal Forum in both urban and rural municipalities.
In the frame of the Community Forum Program, ADI managed to prepare and implement in total 56 forum sessions with 3.360 participants, citizens and representatives from following sectors: Local Self-Government, CSOs, Business sector, Education, Agriculture, Sport and Recreation, Environment, Health Care, Culture and Tourism. Between the forum sessions several workshops and trainings for preparation of strategies and project planning, training for Project cycle management and training to prepare budgets that provided quality preparation of proposals suggested by participants in forums were held. ADI was also responsible for the process of re-granting that is allocation of the grant fund for the municipality (for the selected projects by the community forum participants) according to procedures agreed and developed by SDC and ADI.
As a result of all these activities number of infrastructure projects were realized in the target municipalities which have improved the everyday life of the citizens and in particular the vulnerable groups: young people, children, elderly, women and ethnic minorities.
Location of the action: Bogovinje, Brvenica, Vrapcishte, Kicevo, Chair and Studenicani
Period of implementation: 01.01.2010 – 30.11.2014
Donors to the action: Swiss Agency for Development (SDC)