The opportunities and services offered by the Civic Resource Centre were one of the main topics of discussion during the visit of the Mobile Resource Centre in Demir Hisar that took place on 6th October 2023 with the support of the local organisations Association for the promotion of culture, art, material and spiritual development Centre for creative industries – Nebo, Suvodol and the Association for the development of children and youth ATOK, Demir Hisar.
During the meeting, the team of the Civic Resource Centre informed about the services available to the CSOs as well as about the Help desk tool. This tool allows organisations to easily get in touch with the CRC for any operational or project related issues.
The CRC representatives reminded the participants that one of the services is the use of the free premises for holding meetings or other events of civil society organisations in Skopje. All interested organisations can apply for the use of the space. According to Dragan Stankovski, CRC’s premises will greatly benefit associations like theirs, as they often face problems organising events due to high rental prices.
In addition to informing and discussing about the services, the meeting also had an educational character. The second part was dedicated to the logical framework – the popular tool used in the process of developing project ideas and preparing project proposals. An introduction to filling in and using this tool was made by Valentina Chicheva, from the CRC team. Furthermore, through practical exercises, the participants acquired valuable knowledge and skills related to its use.
“Very often we have great ideas, but we don’t have enough knowledge to translate them into a project,” said Ana Stevanovska from the Association for the development of children and youth ATOK. “We have a great need for training in writing and developing a project proposal,” she added.
The Civic Resource Centre offers an online project writing training that has six comprehensive sessions and is available at https://rcgo.mk/akademija/. One of the sessions covers the logical framework, an important element in project development. In addition, the CRC currently has an open call for training on project planning and project application writing, and the condition for participation in the training is prior completion of the online training.
The participants emphasized the importance of such gatherings for strengthening civil society. Networking opportunities for small organisations offer valuable benefits for information exchange, sharing experiences and knowledge, and collaborative efforts in project calls.
The CRC team remains at the disposal of civil society organisations for any questions or additional information.
The event was organised within the project “EU support of the Civil Society Resource Centre – Phase 2”, financed by the European Union, and implemented by the National Civil Society Development Foundation – Civic Resource Centre, the Macedonian Centre for International Cooperation, Media Plus, Shtip and Association for Democratic Initiatives – ADI, Gostivar.
