PAST
PCDP Programs
Program:
“Promotion of Citizen’s Friendly Decentralisation Process by Applying Uk’s Best Practice”
Financed by:
British Embassy, Skopje
Period:
September 2006 – April 2007
The Association for Sustainable Development and Cooperation – ZORS “Alka” from 15th of September till end of March implemented the Project for “Promotion of Citizen’s Friendly Decentralisation Process by Applying Uk’s Best Practice”, financially supported by the British Embassy in Macedonia.
The Project resulted from the long-term involvement of ZORS “Alka” in implementing the IRDU Program and through achieving cooperation with rural municipalities in Republic of Macedonia. The main idea was to reach the citizen as a central subject of decentralisation processes and also as a main player (moving force) for improving the conditions in municipalities.
For that purpose, an expert team of 5 members was formed, constituted by Dusica Perisic, Goran Angelov, Tanja Altandzieva, Sotir Kostov and Eli Cakar. The team prepared a handbook with easily understood and acceptable content, adjacent to the citizens, and through which they can use mechanisms for improving the conditions in their own municipality.
The Project included field research in 16 municipalities (rural - with rural community as municipal centre and urban - with a city as municipal centre). Thanks to the good cooperation with the mayors, the research showed great diversity into decentralisation processes in Republic of Macedonia. The used methodology incorporated surveys of focus groups and randomly selected citizens.
After conducted research in the target municipalities, the results were summarised and analysed. At the same time the expert team was working on the handbook text that is illustrating all the laws concerning the rights and responsibilities of citizens and municipalities. All this, together with the best UK practices lead to a creation of the handbook “Me and my municipality”. Draft version was distributed in municipalities were the research has been conducted, after which most of them declared praising words for all that was included in the handbook.
The project will result with active and well-informed citizenship ready and willing to participate in decision-making processes in their respective communities. As well as raising the awareness of local government about the common problems that the citizens are confronted with, when they are cooperating with the local government.
We believe that the handbook will succeed to make the decentralisation closer to the citizens, because the local democracy is a new key local dimension for EU and NATO integration.
British embassy project summary PDF(79KB)
Me & my municipality - manual about decentralisation
