The focus of the meeting of the Mobile Resource Center in Prilep was on the Council for cooperation with and development of the civil society. The event was organized in cooperation with the Coalition of youth organisations SEGA and it was held in their premises.
Zoran Ilieski, executive director of the Coalition SEGA and a member of the Council, presented the importance, the functioning and the composition of the Council. He urged the local organisations to contact him if they have initiatives or issues that need to be raised at a higher level so that he can adequately present them at a Council session.
The discussion emphasized that the organisations are much more active in Skopje, and local associations are usually poorly active and underdeveloped, which prevents the local problems and challenges from being transferred to the competent institutions.
The participants noted that the municipality usually has open calls for funds for CSOs in February each year and these grants are between 500 and 1,000 Euros. This is a practice of almost all municipalities in the country, but through symbolic sums, truly effective changes cannot be expected. Some organisations also highlighted the problem of delay in payment or non-payment of these funds to organisations that have already implemented the foreseen activities.
After the meeting with CSOs, the Civic Society Resource Center team had a meeting with representatives from the Unit for Local Economic Development and Cross-Border Cooperation in the Municipality of Prilep. At this meeting, the Municipality informed that funds were provided to about 100 applicants (sports clubs, cultural and artistic associations and other associations) on annual basis. The amount of these funds is different, but does not exceed the amount of 2,000 euros. The payment of funds is carried out on an ongoing basis depending on the available funds of the Municipality.
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.
