The New Swiss Ambassador Has Reconfirmed the Dedication to Civil Society

On 16^th October, the Civica Mobilitas team had their first meeting with the newly appointed Ambassador of Switzerland to North Macedonia, H.E. Christoph Sommer. “I think that the civil society is a very important area which we need to focus on”, stressed the Ambassador, reconfirming that the support to CSOs is one of Switzerland’s priorities.

Aleksandar Krzhalovski, the Team Leader of the programme and the Director of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation (MCIC) gave a short introduction on MCIC in his address, as the organization that implements the programme and is one of the biggest CSOs in the country.

Talking about Civica Mobilitas, the biggest programme for support of the civil society in the country, supported by the Swiss government for almost 20 years, he briefed Ambassador Sommer about the achievements of the three phases in its implementation that MCIC is involved in.

Krzhalovski spoke about the capitalization process, which will cover everything that has been achieved in these almost 20 years. Capitalization will give a broader coverage of Civica Mobilitas results, covering the context in which the activities took place, their compatibility with the important developments in the country and its strategic goals, such as the EU integration process. Ambassador Sommer was presented the initial version of Civica Mobilitas capitalization timeline, made as a digital tool that will help in the navigation throughout the achievements in the course of the past years.

Taking into consideration that Civica Mobilitas has largely been directed to financial support to CSOs, the Ambassador was presented with another digital tool, i.e. a dashboard of the grants, where one can see all supported CSOs, types of grants, sectors that were covered, regions where the activities were implemented, etc. When it comes to grants, the platform grants.mk that is used for the application process was also presented.

State financing was one of the topics that were discussed the most, not only with respect to financial support, but also from the aspect of establishing a transparent system for supporting the CSOs that would enable building a relation of trust between the organizations and institutions at central and local level.

Speaking about the challenges that CSOs face in their work, the Ambassador stressed that they should be resilient and learn how to function in various circumstances.

Civica Mobilitas team thanked about Switzerland’s support to CSOs and wished the new Ambassador success in his work.