Civica Mobilitas and PRAGG Exchanged Experience and Knowhow about the Implementation of the Civil Society Support Programmes
Civica Mobilitas team met their colleagues from the Swiss programme ”Proactive Citizens” (PRAGG) in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 15th to 19th June 2026 in Sarajevo. The exchange of experience in civil society support in the country was in the focus of the discussions. The visit was an excellent opportunity to share the key results, challenges and lessons learnt from their work.
Aleksandar Krzhalovski, Civica Mobilitas Team Leader, spoke about the programme results in the period of 2008-2026. As a predominantly grant awarding programme, she stressed that there were 492 grants awarded and implemented by 395 CSOs. Speaking about the period in which MCIC has implemented he programme, he stressed that the first phase (2014-2018) was focused more on the capacity building of CSOs, the second phase (2019-2022) was focused on improving the civil society environment, and the current one (2023-2026) on increasing civic engagement and public trust in CSOs.
Csilla Schalbert, the international Team Leader presented the PRAGG programme, which has been active from 2021 to 2027. It focuses on citizens, especially on socially excluded groups that are expected to proactively participate in public affairs, to influence the policy creation and contribute to democratic reforms and social changes in Bosnia and Herzegovina via their involvement in CSOs.
In the discussions that followed the introductory presentations, Anja Didović from KULT spoke about the parallel process of building organizational capacities with the grantees while they implement their projects, in order for the organizations to stay sustainable after the end of the support. One of the topics concerned the cooperation with the media. Nikolin Vilov Mahmutović from PRAGG stressed that the topics that CSOs work on are not always attractive for the media. Gonce Jakovleska shared the experience of Civica Mobilitas that uses its own and communication channels and resources of MCIC to help the grantees with their visibility, while part of them already build sustainable cooperation with media on their own.
The two teams presented the results of the PEPA (Political Economy and Policy Analysis) analysis. Petrus Theunisz, Civica Mobilitas international expert stressed that PEPA should be seen as a one-off report but rather as a process and way of thinking, which covers a multi-phased analysis of risks, stakeholders and context. The innovative element of Civica Mobilitas analysis, the usage of digital and AI tools was presented by Boris Ristovski. Ljupka Simonoska Shultz spoke about the application of PEPA in PRAGG, including the usage of power grid methodology to map the stakeholders, a tool whose roots come from Helvetas, which provides a picture that is more detailed than the classical four-quadrant model.
Aleksandra Savevska spoke about the enabling environment and state funding for CSOs in Macedonia. She reflected on the regulation in the Strategy for Cooperation with the Civil Society (2025-2028) according to which state funding should reach 30 million Euro by 2028. Presenting the fluctuations in the state funding for CSOs she stressed that it was quite unstable. The discussion covered the weaknesses of the model, the unclear classification via which financing can be monitored, the insufficient amounts with respect to the needs of the sector and the absence of multi-year institutional support.
Darko Dimov from Civica Mobilitas and Dario Jovanović from CCI presented the grant components, starting with the publication of calls and their popularization up to reporting, monitoring of finances, results, etc.
The Civica Mobilitas team had the possibility to visit several organizations and PRAGG partners throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, such as the Association of Parents of Children with Development Challenges “Be My Friend” in Jablanica, the Sarajevo organizations “Stop Mobbing”, KULT Institute for Development of the Young, the PRAGG partner organization Baby Steps, that works on advocacy, lobbying and public policy shaping, as well as the Coalition for Free and Fair Elections “Under Magnifying Glass” and the Centres for Civic Initiatives (CCI), also a partner organization of PRAGG.
At the visibility and communication session, Nikolina Vilov Mahmutović shared PRAGG’s experience in building the trust with the citizens by storytelling instead of traditional project communication. On the other hand, Boris Ristovski from Civica Mobilitas presented all the possibilities and options offered by the e-platform in order to have a better and more quality communication, visibility and mutual benefits for the CSOs in the country.
The capitalization session completed the image of the whole Civica Mobilitas programme. The capitalization is seen as a way of turning the experience collected throughout the years in a lasting strategic knowhow and inheritance that will remain after the completion of the programme.
In the end, the last part of the meeting was reserved for a discussion on the civil society future in the Balkans, as well as the possibilities for further regional cooperation between the two programmes.
The two programmes of the Swiss government, despite the specific features of the countries where they are implemented and the duration of the interventions showed that the challenges of the civil society are similar, while the solutions are worth to be shared.
The visit was part of Civica Mobilitas activities implemented by MCIC in cooperation with NIRAS from Denmark and FCG from Sweden, in cooperation with PRAGG.
