Joint actions provide greater credibility

At the seventh regional forum of Civica Mobilitas held on 13 October 2015 in the premises of the House of Culture in Kavadarci, the representatives of civil society organizations from the Vardar region talked about mutual cooperation, the migration problems, and visibility and credibility of the actions.

Simon Forester, an international expert, stressed that the forums are a possibility for the organizations to get to know each other, which might lead to future cooperation. “In this way, the mutual competition will be reduced, and the cooperation will increase”, Forester said.

The participants discussed several topics.

The representatives of Agrofalanga from Veles emphasized the insufficient knowledge of the farmers as a problem. They think that the support for farmers’ organizations is not sufficient and that the resources for agriculture and tourism are not sufficiently used. “The extensive substitution of milk with palm oil in the production of dairy products is a problem. Cancer has increased for 30 % in the last 10 years”, Ljupce Stankovski stressed.

“The substitution of original products results in reduction of jobs, poor nutrition of the population, and increase of different diseases”, he added. The young people are not sufficiently educated to recognize domestic products, right tastes, and healthy food. According to Elena Rizova from Eco-life, it is necessary to organize such education for the youngest ones so they can learn to make a difference between real (organic) and the other foods.

According to Pance Arsovski from Vinotek, it is necessary to establish the cooperatives again, mutual help for work, buying mechanization, help during harvest. What is missing the most in the fields, he thinks, are the young people.

The Women’s Organization from Sveti Nikole stressed the weak association among the smaller organizations. “There must be an increased communication among the active organizations, in order to be able to educate ourselves, to share information among each other, and in this way to come to some final outcome or project”, Darko Jovancevski said. He also stressed the migration problem. “In the past, the topic of our meetings was the lack of active youth, and now we talk about lack of youth at all”.

Raim Sulejmanov from Tikves Roma stressed the need for free legal aid for the Roma people in the region. He talked about the benefits of the project that was implemented three years ago, when many Roma children were covered by activities for their better inclusion in the education and support by additional lessons.

What is missing, according to Sulejmanov, is the sustainability of those activities.

“Joint association of more actors give a greater credibility of the action, not only before the public, but also before the authorities and institutions. If the organizations focus on mutual cooperation, they will have better outreach to bigger number of citizens”, Forester said at the end of the regional forum in Kavadarci.

Civica Mobilitas is a project of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), which is implemented by NIRAS from Denmark, Мacedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC) and the Swedish Institute for Public Administration (SIPU). Civica Mobilitas provides support to civil society organizations and other civil society actors. The implementation started in October last year and it will last for four years.