The training for civil society organisations in Montenegro was the third in raw, to complete the serial of trainings organised in the project countries. It was held in Podgorica from 3 to 5 October 2018.
More info coming soon!
Media coverage from the PR Centre is available following this link>>>
Association Prevent and Drug Policy Network SEE organized a three-day training “Advocacy of Budgetary Financing of the Harm Reduction Programs in Serbia” from 25 to 27 September at Mt. Avala, near Belgrade. The training was attended by 16 representatives of organizations: Bečej Youth Association, Timok Youth Center, Policy Analysis and Policy Creation Group, Association Remiks, Association Prevent and DPNSEE. The training was led by experts from Macedonia’s Healthy Options Project Skopje and ESE.
The training included general information and practical steps in the advocacy and monitoring process. In addition, Dr Jasmina Tanasić from the Standing Conference of Cities and Municipalities presented the Budget programming model used in the country.
A one-year budget support plan for harm reduction program in Serbia was prepared. According to the plan, in the forthcoming period an analysis of the budget of the Republic of Serbia (Ministry of Health, alcohol and tobacco excise, income from games of chance and opportunity) will be carried out and 4 projects by 4 organizations on the following topics:
Just after the Training for national consultancy teams, Grand hotel in Sarajevo hosted the Training for civil society organisations in Bosnia Herzegovina from 5 to 7 September 2018. This was the first of three national trainings for civil society organisations as part of the Budget Advocacy and Monitoring in countries of South East Europe project.
The training included general information and practical steps in the advocacy process: identifying the issue and causes of the problem, research and budget analysis, stakeholders and advocacy targets, influencing budgets at national and municipal levels, mapping budget information and documents, planning, taking actions, monitoring, anti-corruption, reviewing, evaluation and learning.
Participants came from organisations working in both entities of the country – The Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina and Republic of Srpska: Margina from Tuzla and Zenica, Viktorija from Banja Luka, Proi, Partnership for Health and Asocijacija XY from Sarajevo.
The training was delivered by Darko Antikj from ESE and Vlatko Dekov from HOPS who have developed the model and successfully implemented it in Macedonia.
The training resulted in producing a national plan of action to be implemented by the end of 2019. It includes creating a platform of NGOs for sustainability of harm reduction services, ensuring political support, creation of a budget line in the health budget of the entities of the country, establishing a social contracting mechanism and agreeing on criteria and standards for the services.
The training for national consultancy teams was organised from 3 to 5 September 2018 in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina. It was the first in a serial of training opportunities offered by the Budget Advocacy and Monitoring in countries of South East Europe project.
The aim of the training was to gain mutual understanding of the project, the budget advocacy and monitoring model and role of the consultancy teams in implementing the national plans of actions. 15 participants came from the three involved countries.
The training will be delivered by Darko Antikj from ESE and Vlatko Dekov from HOPS who have developed the model and successfully implemented it in Macedonia.
The agenda included issues of:
The training have helped to clarify various issues related to the topic and the way the project will be implemented and agree on basis for designing the national plans. Also, it was specific team building exercise for the national consultancy teams.
The Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women – ESE published a very useful publication “Budget monitoring and advocacy manual for harm reduction”. The manual provides detailed information for each of the stages in the process of budget monitoring and advocacy. Those who want to analyse and monitor budgets and advocate for more funds for harm reduction, can learn a lot from it.
ESE worked in partnerships with DPNSEE member organisation HOPS for several years to achieve an excellent success with ensuring that harm reduction services are supported from the national budget. The two organisations organised the training for organisations in Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia in December 2017. DPNSEE is currently planning a project in the three countries on budget advocacy and monitoring.
The manual is available from the ESE webpage following this link>>>
Why is it necessary to advocate for adequate funding of drug use harm reduction programs?
Which changes do we expect to achieve by advocating for adequate funding?
The regional training on budget advocacy and monitoring, held from 21 to 23 December 2017 in the hotel Romantik in Veles, Macedonia, tried to provide answers to these and many other questions. The training was organized by HOPS – Healthy Options, Skopje, with the support of the Foundation Open Society – Macedonia and conducted by experts from The Association for Emancipation, Solidarity and Equality of Women – ESE from Skopje.
The participants of the training gained knowledge that will help in their efforts to obtain financial resources from the state authorities, and covered topics that point out the problems that the organizations are experiencing due to insufficient funds, as well as the activities that the organizations can take to solve them. In addition, the process of budget analysis as a basis for advocating for creation of an effective budget as well as the procedures that are important in the process of monitoring and analysis of budgets were analysed.
11 participants come from six harm reduction civil society organisations from the region who are faced with a lack of funding for their programs after the departure of the Global Fund: Prevent and DPNEE from Serbia, Margina and PROI from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Juventas and Cazas from Montenegro (all members of DPNSEE), and two came from local organisation Becej Youth Association from Bečej, Serbia and Group for Public Policies from Belgrade.
