Kumanovo citizens have focused on migrations and youth

On 10 June 2015, in the House of Culture “Trajko Prokopiev” in Kumanovo, under the motto “Your space, your voice”, the first regional forum of Civica Mobilitas was held. About thirty representatives of civil society organizations and civic activists from the Northeastern region, used the “open space”, offered by the regional forum, to talk about topics that they consider that should be treated in order to cause social changes.

The social changes and cooperation were the two key issues referred to by Simon Forester, an international expert of Civica Mobilitas. “The cooperation can help in building a legitimacy, resource maximization, and civil society strengthening”, he said, and added that “the cooperation instead of competition brings greater benefits for civic organization, and the first step to cooperation is identification of those that can cause change.”

“What connects the civil society organizations are the problems on which they should work together”, Trajan Dimkovski, a participant at the forum from the Rural Coalition from Kumanovo, said. Financing, transparency of civil society organizations, their mutual cooperation, emigration, support for the citizens of “Divo Naselje” were some of the social issues identified at the regional forum in Kumanovo.

The participants discussed about migrations and youth in groups. “Migrations are shock for the society”, Simon Forester said. The role of civil society organizations is to help the society overcome that shock”. In the discussion about the youth, they stressed the problems with their partization and passiveness which should be dealt with by the civil society organizations. The participants think that there is a need for motivation and engagement of youth in creative and attractive activities. A special attention should be paid to youth from rural areas. Cooperation through a regional youth council and involvement in the organization of events were only some od the possibilities identified by the participants.

The participants had an opportunity to share experiences about effective cooperation for social change, and to hear about good practices from Europe.

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.