The lack of premises and trained personnel in civil society organisations are the main difficulties encountered by the associations from Probistip, as it was pointed out during the meeting of the Mobile Resource Center that took place on 30th May 2019.
Young people do not consider volunteering as attractive, and organisations do not have much experience and knowledge how to support and involve them in their work. Mandy, who is a volunteer from the Peace Corps and volunteers for the municipality and the Red Cross in Probistip, shared her experience about the opportunity to be part of the organisation and to contribute to the community.
Other shortcomings of the associations were highlighted at the meeting, including inexperience in planning, mobilization of community support, fundraising and preparing grant applications. In order to address these needs for improvement and advancement, the next step should be to organise training on these topics.
The organisations shared different experiences of cooperation with the municipality and the support they received. One of the main requirements is ensuring premises for operation that they do not have currently, and they would be satisfied if the municipality made efforts to adjust some empty premises and make them available for CSOs.
The CSRC team also met with Maria Miteva, a representative from the Mayor’s office and Natasha Smilkova, from the Department for Local Economic Development (LED) responsible for communication with the civil society organisations. The municipality publishes open calls, but also provides ad-hoc grants to associations. The Municipality understands CSOs’ need for adequate premises and it has an initiative to open a Center for CSOs, but this idea has not been put into practice yet due to the lack of funds.
The municipality is in the final phase of developing a Strategy for cooperation with civil society organisations.
The Civil Society Resource Centre is EU-funded project implemented by Macedonian Centre for International Cooperation in partnership with Association for Democratic Initiatives ADI from Gostivar and Media Plus from Stip.
