Community mobilization workshop

Community mobilization, civic activism promotion, and strengthening the civil society organizations’ constituencies was the main idea of the workshop held on 14 June 2016 in the Office of Youth of Municipality of Center, Skopje. Nineteen representatives of institutional and action grantees of Civica Mobilitas participated at the workshop, and it was conducted by Simon Forester, an international expert of the program.

In smaller groups, the participants planned a national conference/forum about community mobilization, which should happen as a follow-up activity of this workshop. They expressed their satisfaction with the workshop contents. In the concept, they have recognized part of their past activities, and later, through practical work, they applied part of the things they have discussed about.

“This training is especially important for the mobilization of as many persons from the community as possible”, Donka Petrovska from DROM – Kumanovo said. “Through experience exchange among the civil society organizations, we notice positive practices and methodology which we will apply in our organization. Led by the needs and mood of the community, using the capacities by engaging all stakeholders, we can improve the mobilization”, she said. According to Sonja Stojadinovik from Left-wing Movement – Solidarity, the lack of people to implement the civil society organizations’ activities is huge. “The very engagement, interest, and activation of the people for the solution of local problems is a challenge for the activists, and it is almost half of the work that needs to be completed in order to achieve the planned results. The ideas and proposed solutions coming from the Macedonian civil society organizations together with the ideas coming from the other countries, are key to overcoming these challenges”, Stojadinovik said.

Four key areas: community mobilization concept within the global context; identification of the key issues related to community mobilization; community mobilization in Macedonia; setting of goals and ideas about the contents of the conference/forum about community mobilization were elaborated at the workshop.