Second local platform meeting held in Nova Gradiska

Lokalna platforma NG, 09.06.2016.

Lokalna platforma NG, 09.06.2016.

On 9 June 2016, the second motivational meeting of local expert platform in the town of Nova Gradiska was held.

In addition to ILC's project team members in IPA 2011 "Civil society for responsible governance" project, coordinator Natasa Kovacevic and project assistant Marina Baric-Gacic, the meeting was attended by members of the platform: Mihaela Djeraj, representative of the City of Nova Gradiska, Anita Cermak-Jankovic, representative of the Center for social welfare Nova Gradiska, Tamara Kovacevic, representative of the Association for the prevention of social pathology behavior of young people "Prevention" from Nova Gradiska and Simonida Tarbuk, representative of Civic initiative "NG-rebels".

At the meeting, members of the local expert platform discussed the impact of the local elections in Nova Gradiska to the relationship with civil society organizations, the planned adoption of the city budget and the procedure of calling a public tender for financing projects and programs of CSOs, in accordance with the Regulation on the criteria, standards and procedures of financing and contracting programs and projects of interest to the common good implemented bythe CSOs.

After the exchange of experiences on the cooperation of CSOs with each other, as well as with the Departments of Social Services in both cities, which was rated as very good, the participants stressed the problem of insufficient capacity of most organizations in both cities for writing projects, as evidenced by the poor attendance of education which both cities conducted, nor sufficient utilization of development agencies that offer the service of writing projects. Consequently, CSOs fell into financial difficulties because for many of them the only income is from the city budget which creates difficulties particularly to organizations from the city of Nova Gradiska, because the call for proposals has not yet been announced.

Furthermore, the results of the monitoring and the number of collected questionnaires for members of the Roma minority, the national minorities in general and youth employment through measures "Youth Guarantee" were presented during the platform. Representatives of the “NG-rebels“ and CSO “Prevention“ presented their experiences and emphasized that they do not have difficulties in carrying out monitoring.

Finally, Natasa Kovacevic has announced the upcoming activities of the project "Civil society for responsible management"  such as local reports on the implementation of the monitoring of each of the organizations, and also the development of an action plan in the city of Nova Gradiska. After several proposals, members of the platform have agreed to reflect on topics which would include the problems of target groups  and which would be included in the action plan.

Organisation of motivational meetings is one of the key activities that Information Legal Centre is conducting within the two-year project "Civil society for responsible management" funded by European Union from IPA 2011.