ONGOING REPORT ON "BE AWARE - BE CAPABLE" PROJECT

 

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Introduction

 

            The serial of seminars with the name: "Be aware - Be capable" has been organized to meet the needs of Yugoslavian NGO ( environmental) community for basic information and skills on local community development. The other task of this project was to empower YUNEM (Yugoslavian, Nongovernmental, Environmental Network) by building contacts and exploring the needs of the potential users and members.

            The seminars had 4 workshops:

 

NGOs & local community development - LA21

NGOs & local business

NGOs & media

Good practice examples

 

Evaluation:

 

            The seminars were planned to cover the most of the Yugoslavian NGO (Environmental) Community, thus the sessions were scheduled in Nis ( South and East Serbia ), Vrsac ( Vojvodina ), Belgrade ( Central Serbia ) and Podgorica - Budva ( Monte Negro ).

            So far, we had performed 3 of 4 sessions while the workshops in Monte Negro are yet to be done. We had 73 participants, all together, with approximately equal number per each meeting. The participants were mostly from the Environmental NGOs ( that has been targeted ) although we had participants from other organizations ( human rights, democracy development, refugee programs, small business association, etc.) as well as representatives of local media but as active participants and not only reporters.

            The overall respond and interest was very good. In the evaluation forms that has been filled and returned to us, the seminars and workshops have been judged as very good and instructive. About 43% participants asked for more such meetings and also specialized ones on particular topics ( fund raising, networking, local action plans, collaboration with the media ). Over 70% pledged for better  communication and collaboration with each other, thus YUNEM as a concept of networking has been strongly supported.

            On the fourth workshop ( good practice examples ) a numerous interesting examples have been presented.

            We also used the meetings to promote our Appeal to stop setting up nuclear waste dump in East Serbia. This appeal has been fully supported.

 

Follow up:

 

•       Upon finishing the serial with session in Monte Negro, we will publish detailed report with the benchmarks for the NGOs participation in the local community development.

•       We will reinforce our activities on YUNEM project

•       We will produce further programs based on participant's requests and demands.

 

Summary:

 

To organize and implement our project we actively involved (so far) 10 persons and 7 organizations and lot of work. However, the results justified in full applied efforts and expectations. The final report with the budget justification will be produced upon finalization of the project, in full.

 

Remark:

 

            The present political situation influenced the proper timing of the project and to some of its expected effects ( insufficient media reports on the events and participation of the non-environmental NGOs ). However, considering the achieved results, we strongly believe that we had contributed to the NGO empowerment in the best sense.