41. Civil society organizations need cooperation and solidarity

About twenty representatives of civil society organizations participated in the work of the regional forum of Civica Mobilitas organized on 25 June 2015 in the House of Culture “Grigor Prlicev” in Ohrid. The topics that were discussed were: participation in decision making at local level; youth engagement; waste management; ecology; migrants; animals without shelter, without care.

And, also this time the focus was placed on the social changes and cooperation. The representatives of civil society organizations from Ohrid, Vevcani, Debar, and Kicevo, who were present at the forum, talked about their experiences of cooperation, and Simon Forester, an international expert of Civica Mobilitas, talked about good practices of the organizations from Europe. “We should not look at cooperation only for the purpose of causing a change”, Forester said, “while we cooperate we learn from each other, and we all become stronger”, he added. The discussion was focused on the questions: How to learn through cooperation? And, how the organizations become stronger?

“The majority makes a force, and for that we need cooperation and solidarity”, Flamur Muladauti, from the Center for Sustainable Development of the Community from Debar, said. According to him, it is necessary to improve the communication among the civil society organizations, the cooperation of the organizations with the local authorities, with the institutions, and with the citizens in general. “When we are joint together, we will achieve the effects more easily”, he added.

The participants agreed that solidarity was determining for the society. They proposed an establishment of a regional civic platform. One of the activities of the platform would be awareness raising of the civil society organizations for cooperation and solidarity. The participants thought that the spheres and possibilities for cooperation should be identified, and they talked also about the stakeholders: local authorities, civil society organizations, citizens in general, institutions, concerned parties especially about certain topics which would be treated.

Civica Mobilitas is a project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), which is implemented by NIRAS from Denmark, Мacedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC) and the Swedish Institute for Public Administration (SIPU). Civica Mobilitas provides support to civil society organizations and other civil society actors. The implementation started in October last year and it will last for four years.