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.
