Civica Mobilitas promoted the last 24 grantees

Civica Mobilitas, today (22 December 2017), in hotel Arka in Skopje, promoted the new small and ad hoc grantees. “Today, we award the last 24 grants of this phase of the program. In the past three years, we have awarded 221 grants to 212 organizations, eight fellowships, and one internship grant.”, Aleksandar Krzalovski, the National Team Leader of the program and first Executive Director of MCIC, said in his remarks.

The Swiss Ambassador to Macedonia, Her Excellency Sybille Suter Tejada, awarded the contracts to the grantees. “In the last two years we have seen great political and social changes in the country, and certainly a great part of their merit is at the account of the civil society”, she said, and that some of the Civica Mobilitas grantees were the leaders of those processes. She stressed that without the involvement of each citizen, the political and social changes would not have happened. The Ambassador Suter Tejada also announced that Switzerland would continue to support the civil society in the next four years.

A total number of 7 organizations received small action grants intended for support to civil society organizations which want to promote their causes and activities with a total budget of over 2.7 million denars. The planned activities are intended for marginalized groups of people, farmers, young people in the educational process and for strengthening the awareness of the citizens to use renewable sources of energy.

At this event, 17 ad hoc grantees were promoted with a budget of 5.3 million denars. These organizations, through their activities, will focus on migrations, gender issues, public funds, judiciary and human rights, environment, decentralization and citizens’ participation in policy making at local level, disabled persons, etc.

The awarded organizations come from the Skopje, Southwestern, Pelagonia, Eastern, and Southeastern regions.

The new support for the civil society organizations and other civil society actors through the Civica Mobilitas program of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) started in October 2014 and it will last till September 2018. The Budget of the program is about eight million Swiss francs.