Civic Impulse #10: Monthly Review of Grantee Activities
October 2025
October was a month of new initiatives and activities that have raised the awareness on environment, youth participation, education, health and inclusion.
The project “Civic Activism in Establishing Circular Economy in Organic Waste Management” continued with open activities with a caravan for experiment demonstration in schools, where the students learned how to create useful products from organic waste, such as biodiesel and they got acquainted with natural materials such as potato peel, flaxseed and sunflower oil, as well as chia. The workshops in primary schools “Hristijan Todorovski Karposh” and “Dimo Hadzi Dimov“ aimed to stimulate curiosity and interest of the young people in natural sciences and environment protection, encouraging ideas about sustainable solutions in waste management.
The analysis of KRIK Center for Youth Activism, CSI Hope and the Association of Social Workers of Macedonia (ZSRM) showed that although most of the households have access to public water supply, the quality and availability of water significantly differ among the regions and urban and rural areas. There is support to eco activities, but the participation of the young people remains low, and only a small part of them are involved in volunteering activities. Nevertheless, there is a growing awareness in the connection between human rights, good governance and environment protection, as well as increased use of public transport, waste selection, saving of water and energy and more conscious consumer behaviour.
In October, the mentors on eco-social transformation from CSI “Hope” and ZSRM participated in a three hour on-line session of the project “ZZZ – Together for Green Advocacy for Environment Protection”, where 18 mentors developed their skills in active listing, activity channelling and defining their personal and collective role in sustainable social changes via coaching and action learning.
The monitoring of the web pages of 81 municipalities, implemented by the Center for Climate Changes showed that Skopje region is the most active one, with 72 posts related to Green Agenda, and the Eastern one is the least active with only 24 posts. It is concerning that 17 municipalities have not had any post on the environment in the last six months. The regional geography society “GEOSFERA” from Bitola organised a panel discussion with the candidates for mayor on the possibilities for involvement in the Green Agenda in the future development of Bitola, where the citizens and the candidates gave many proposals on dealing with pollution, circular economy, green urban mobility and capital ecological projects.
The young people continued to be active in various initiatives. On 3rd October in Bitola, Pro Local organised a round table on “Mental Health of Young People”, where principals, psychologists, pedagogues and representatives of the Municipality of Bitola identified the most frequent challenges and worked on joint cooperation and prevention. At the same time, there was a Memorandum of Cooperation signed between “Dr. Jovan Kalauzi” medical high school and Pro Local, and in the municipality of Mogila there was a workshop on “Managing the Waste We Create Ourselves” as part of the Regional Youth Platform initiatives.
In education, the grantees of the project “Empowerment for Inclusive Development” published the article “Difficult Way to Science and Art“, which analyses the lack of investments in scholarly research and innovation and the impact on the economic development and competitiveness in the country. Lorik Idrizi from BIRC in “Urban Short Stories: Invisible Boundaries of Knowledge“, has opened question son the young people, ambition and the society which still measures success via jobs in the public sector.
At the thematic forum “When One Saves on Prevention, the Consequences Are Expensive“, the CSOs and institutions sent a joint appeal to the health care institutions to make bigger investments in prevention and better access to quality health services for women, girls and vulnerable groups. The forum has revealed serious shortcomings in the national prevention programmes, such as decrease of the HIV prevention budget and the low coverage of the cervical cancer screening. The event was part of the project “Advancing the Health Rights of Women, Girls and Vulnerable Groups”, implemented by partner organizations supported by Civica Mobilitas.
The 2026 preventive programme for active health protection of mothers and children was the focus of the consultative meeting of the Ministry of Health in cooperation with HERA – Health Education and Research Association. Representatives of relevant institutions, international organizations and civil sector discussed together about the contents and priorities of the programme, in order to improve the access and quality of services for mothers, children and vulnerable categories of women.
In the area of inclusion, on 25th and 26th October, “Antiko” women’s civil initiative and its partners held a training on civic participation in the policy and decision making processes, with the participation of 20 grassroot organizations from eight regions. Via interactive sessions, the participants discussed the legal possibilities for participation, the role of the associations in decentralization, building partnerships with the local authorities and preparation of local initiatives and action plans for changes in the community.
All of these activities, supported by the Swiss Government via Civica Mobilitas show that despite the challenges, CSOs continue to contribute to green transformation, bigger participation of the young, improvement of the education, health and inclusiveness by creating better and long-term changes in the society.
