NEWS
28/02/2023Today, the awards for the best partnership initiatives “Partners in Action” were awarded in the premises of Helvetas. Prizes in the form of cash checks of EUR 5,000, EUR 3,000 and EUR 2,000, glass statues, the brochure “Partners in Action” and caricatures were awarded to: the Association of Psychologists Novi Pazar, the city of Novi Pazar for winning first place, the Society for the Development of Creativity from Aleksinac and the municipality Aleksinac for second place, Media and Reform Center from Niš and Palilula city municipality from Niš for third place.
Prizes were presented to the winners by: Melina Papageorgiou, first secretary of SDC, Snežana Mišić Mihajlović, international team leader of the ACT project, Biljana Đusić Radmilović, national programme officer of SDC. The supported partnership initiatives within ACT related to the strengthening of the partnership between citizens’ associations and local self-government through the mandatory definition and adoption of missing regulations, the initiation of joint initiatives for greater participation of citizens in decision-making processes, better monitoring of the work of local authorities and the improvement of provision public services. When choosing the best initiative, the jury was guided by the following criteria: sustainability of the project, involvement of citizens, innovation and engagement of the partner consortium.
The winning initiative “Let’s get to know each other and help” from Novi Pazar refers to the database of users of social services, which is located on the city’s website and which will enable better planning and financing of social benefits for this category of citizens. The second place, Aleksinac, the “People for the People” initiative refers to the monitoring of the work of communal services by citizens and the unification of those recommendations on what could be improved and improved. Third place was won by the Niš initiative “Public hearings are a prerequisite for good decisions” concerning the adoption of the Decision on public hearings, which encourages citizens to take part in the decision-making process.
On this occasion, an interesting discussion was held, which was opened by Nikola Tarbuk, Secretary General of SKGO, and Aleksandar Grunauer, team leader of the MED project. In his presentation, Tarbuk emphasized that the most important is the strategic and normative framework that would enable citizens to use local self-government as a service that works in their interest. “Citizens are interested in simple topics that affect their daily lives, and as far as I can see from your brochure, you all dealt with such topics,” he said. He praised the awarded projects and said that experts from SKGO were actively involved during the launch of this component, but also as mentors during the implementation of the projects.
Grunauer said that Switzerland has over 170 years of local citizen participation experience and that through project support, it wants to transfer its experience and examples of good practice in our country. In this sense, it is not surprising that the Swiss Government supports ACT, which is focused on the civil sector, and the MED project, which focuses its work on supporting municipalities. He concluded that citizens and municipalities are on the same side when it comes to solving problems in their environment.
Representatives of local self-governments agreed that municipal development plans, budget planning, defining necessary local services, regular information of citizens are the key topics of cooperation with the civil sector, which according to them works well, which is best demonstrated by successfully implemented initiatives. The representatives of the award-winning associations emphasized that the interest of the “ordinary man” should be the epicenter of their joint action.
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