The Macedonian Center for International Cooperation and BCSDN held the kick-off event for their joint project “Balkan Civil Society Acquis: Strengthening the potential and capacity of civil society organizations for advocacy and lobbying ” on the 4th of April, 2013. The project is supported by the European Union. Around 25 representatives of civil society organizations, government officials, and representatives from foreign and international organizations were introduced to the content of the project and the basic characteristics of the matrix. The Matrix, which is a tool for monitoring to be used by CSOs, contains 3 areas, eight sub-areas and 151 indicators. It was designed to monitor an enabling environment for civil society development for the countries in the Balkan region, specifically, but adapted it could be applied more broadly.
The Macedonian Center for International Cooperation and BCSDN held the kick-off event for their joint project “Balkan Civil Society Acquis: Strengthening the potential and capacity of civil society organizations for advocacy and lobbying ” on the 4th of April, 2013. The project is supported by the European Union. Around 25 representatives of civil society organizations, government officials, and representatives from foreign and international organizations were introduced to the content of the project and the basic characteristics of the matrix. The Matrix, which is a tool for monitoring to be used by CSOs, contains 3 areas, eight sub-areas and 151 indicators. It was designed to monitor an enabling environment for civil society development for the countries in the Balkan region, specifically, but adapted it could be applied more broadly.
Opening remarks were given by Irena Ivanova from the Delegation of the European Union, which said it was particularly important that more than ten Macedonian CSOs are part of the awarded FPA regional projects supported by the EU, and pointed out that this one is the only project which is led by organizations based in Macedonia. Furthermore, Tanja Hafner – Ademi, BCSDN, presented the project and referred to the six strategic objectives of BCSDN which will be implemented over the next four years. Emina Nuredinoska, MCIC, gave a detailed overview of the concept and content of the matrix. It was pointed out that this document is a comprehensive and valuable tool that can be used by civil society organizations to easily identify the conditions in which organizations operate and the priorities that they need to base their activities aimed at further development of civil society on. Additionally, the matrix can be used by state authorities and delegations of the European Union in the region in drafting progress reports on the development of the EU accession countries.
The second part of the program saw the formation of three working groups where participants could actively engage in discussing the content of the matrix. Participants, through discussion, identified points for improvement of the matrix and possibilities for adjustments to be included in this document by the end of this year.