The third Networking Meeting for the Civica Mobilitas grantees has finished

A total number of 186 representatives from civil society organizations supported by the Civica Mobilitas program, on 24 and 25 October 2017 in Ohrid, exchanged knowledge and experiences from their everyday work and discussed how to make the changes, that they make in the society, become more visible.

“A great part of the ideas I have received during this event come from the experiences shared by my colleagues from other organizations”, Kiro Jordanov, from Spectrum Plus, said. “I have met with several organizations which are very similar to ours and we have discussed about cooperation in future projects”, he added.

The focus of this Networking meeting was placed on the recognition of changes made by the organizations and their visualization, i.e. the way in which those changes are communicated to the citizens regardless if they are target groups or the general public.

Simon Forester, an international expert of the program in Great Britain and Mike Zuijderduijn, Director of MDF (Management for Development Foundation) from the Netherlands stimulated the participants to think about the changes made by their activities. Working in groups, they identified the changes which were made thanks to their activities, and then, they demystified the steps necessary to make that change. The whole process was predominantly intended to raise the awareness of the organizations about what they identify as a change and how they measure it and present it to the public.

“Civica Mobilitas program is exceptionally important to us regarding the recruitment of young journalists who will accept the mission of SCOOP, and that is the monitoring of the work of state institutions at central and local level.  With the grant we managed to initiate specific procedures before the institutions and to contribute to increase the transparency of political parties”, Zaklina Hadzi-Zafirova from the Center for Investigative Journalism SCOOP, Macedonia said.

The networking meeting is a unique opportunity for the grantees, all of them together in one place to share experiences and to discuss the problems they have faced and the way they have overcome them.