ARE CITIZENS INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING IN LOCAL POLICIES?

Community forums, coordination with the presidents of the local communities, a coordination body at CSO level, Youth Council, Local Economic and Social Council; these are only part of the ways for civic participation in Sveti Nikole mentioned by the mayor Sasho Velkovski at “Citizens – Participants in Local Policies” forum which took place on 13 November this year in Sveti Nikole.

Around 50 participants, most of them high school students, participated in the discussion on cooperation between the municipalities and CSOs and civic participation in local policy creation.

Eli Chakar from the Ministry of Local Self-Government stressed that the citizens must not forget their active role in the society after the elections. According to her, money is not the main problem for inactivity, but rather the unpredictability and the fact that there are no unified criteria that would apply to all municipalities. This concerns not only funding of CSOs but also all activities in which they are expected to participate or give heir contribution.

Gjuner Nebiu, the president of the Women’s Civic Initiative Antiko spoke about gender sensitive budgeting. She explained that this budgeting does not mean budget increase, but rather a reallocation of funds based on the needs. She illustrated this with the example for financing of a school football club for which boys were interested and not financing a volleyball team which is of bigger interest for the girls.

Brankica Dimitrovska, from Handicap Plus association from Kriva Palanka spoke about the need to build the capacities of the CSOs that work on policies of people with special needs. She recommended the municipality to upgrade their web page and make it more accessible to people with visual impairment.

For Dragana Mitrovik, a youth activist, it is important to clarify the term “civic participation”, both for the adults and the youth. According to her, the young people have self initiative and motivation, but it often happens that the older people are those that would suffocate their ideas. She mentioned that there have been significant developments at national level also when it comes to adopting the Law on Youth Participation and Youth Policies and the national youth strategies. This approach towards solving the issues is a big step forward compared to the period when the Agency fro Youth and Sports had a zero budget for the young.

The participants agreed that it needed to additionally raise the awareness with the citizens about how important their participation is in policy creation at local level. This is a two way alley where the obligations and responsibilities are with the local self-government units, but also with the citizens who should go a step further from the passive participation which they practice.