Месяц: 1ТП1Ц

A call for applications to French language training for 5 Macedonian mountain guides was launched on 1st September. Registration shall be completed by 5th October.
The need of a French language training was emerged during a seminar promoted by ALDA in May 2012 in the framework of France-Balkans decentralized cooperation programme.

Please find below the application forms:

The application form has to be sent to the following address:

Alliance Française de TETOVO,
18 Dervish Cara
1200 Tetovo

The forms are also available on Alliance française de Tetovo’s на страницу Facebook and Association of Macedonian mountain Guides’ сайтом.

An information meeting will be organized for registered guides at Alliance Française de Tetovo on Saturday 22 September at 11 a.m.
This event is organized further to seminar «Tourism and outdoor activities» which ALDA organized in Tetovo in May 2012 within the framework of France-Balkans multilateral decentralized cooperation program. On this occasion, stakeholders, namely tourism professionals, had explained that mountain hiking development and tourism as a whole suffered from guides’ poor foreign languages knowledge.

ALDA is one of the main European Civil Society Associations that promoted the “Civil Society Alliance for the European Year on active citizenship 2013”, with the support of the European Economic and Social Committee.
In particular, with reference to the activities to be carried out in Italy, ALDA, in collaboration with the Third Sector Forum and the Italian Council of the European Federalist Movement, has scheduled a meeting between the associations of civil society organizations, to constitute the national network for the EYC 2013.
The meeting will take place in Rome on the 14th of September (11:00 – Via IV Novembre, 149 – second floor).

For the Alliance, active citizenship means primarily active involvement of citizens as participation in the life of their communities, and thus in democracy, in terms of activity and decision-making.
ALDA, as promoter of the Alliance, is launching its activities in France, Croatia and Italy.

From 1 to 5 September 2012 ALDA participated to the international workshop in Hammamet organized in the framework of the project YOUTH GLOCAL SCENARIOS – l’Euromed que nous souhaitons. Lead partner of the project is the organization JID – Jeunes Indipendants Democrates, organizer of the event and very active in supporting citizens participation and defend human rights at local level in Tunis. To know more on this association, visit its page on FB or its сайтом.

The workshop was addressed to young and local administrators with a focus on NGOs role and challenges in the near future in the Mediterranean area and it saw the adhesion of young people from Tunisia, Italy, Spain, Lebanon and Palestine,
This initiative is one of the action of a project aiming to increase and reinforce the youth participation at local level and the participatory processes in the Med Area, promote an actual inter-institutional dialogue and support the local amelioration of the institutional capacities.
This event gave also the opportunity to involve one of the volunteers that already joined the Volunteers for Democracy (V4D) Programme, Joana Ricart Sala from Barcelona, Spain.
If you’re interested in joining the Programme find здесь all the information and don’t hesitate to contact Cinzia Spinazzè,  cinzia.spinazze@aldaintranet.org for any additional information !

VOLUNTEERS FOR DEMOCRACY DIARY

I applied for the ALDA Volunteers for Democracy project in Tunisia because I thought it could be a great opportunity to know the state of affairs of the civil organisations in this country after the 2010 revolution. The association JID – “Jeunes Indépendents Démocrats” lead the project which gathered Tunisian, Lebanese, Italian and Palestinian associations and NGOs and young people of several Mediterranean countries. During the workshop sessions we discussed civil society organisations issues such as its role in politics and in the society, its link with the governmental institutions, its role as regional development actors, its funding and its activities. The last workshop was devoted to suggest new projects and partnerships between the present organisations. I found this experience a very enriching opportunity, apart from the great hospitality of the organisers, all the event was very well organised and we had the opportunity to learn a lot through all the participants’ personal experiences and to widen our knowledge on the Tunisian civil society situation and reality. Definitely, I would gladly repeat the experience with ALDA Volunteers for Democracy programme! 

Joana Ricart Sala from Barcelona, Spain, V4D in Tunisia

ALDA is organising an event included, by the European Commission, in the official programme of the next European Development Days. It will be a WTD project creative laboratory, conceived as a learning café session, aiming at brainstorming and proposing recommendations integrating the contributions of experts and practitioners on the advantages of creating real synergies between LAs and CSOs in development cooperation.

The activity of the event will be structured in a dynamic and creative way, which allows not only experts but also practitioners to have a tangible contribution to the formulations of recommendations.
WTD learning café wants to formulate recommendations responding to 6 key themes identified as the main features characterizing the joint involvement of LAs and CSOs in development cooperation processes.
Will participate at the event as experts Murat Daoudov, Director of International Cooperation, Union of Municipalities of Marmara (Turkey), Tanja Hafner-Ademi, Executive Director, Balkan Civil Society Development Network (Macedonia), Chuck Hirt, Director, Central Eastern and European Citizens Network (Slovakia),  Giovanni Camilleri,    International Coordinator, ART Programme UNDP    (Switzerland), Klavdija Cernilogar, Head of Policy, CONCORD (Belgium) and Antonella Valmorbida, Director, ALDA. Moderator will be Peter Sondergaard, Policy officer, ALDA.
The seventh edition of the European Development Days (EDD) will take place in Brussels, Belgium on 16 and 17 October 2012.
This year’s headline theme will be sustainable and inclusive growth for human development and the forum will take place over two important dates: the World Food Day (16 October) and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October).
Throughout 22 High-Level Panels (HLP), almost 30 Project Labs (P-Labs), and a number of side events, EDD 2012 will focus especially on three major sub-themes under the umbrella of the headline theme: sustainable agriculture, food security and resilience; engaging the private sector for development; and empowering people for inclusive growth.
Almost one year after the adoption of the ‘Agenda for Change’  the EU will take the opportunity to open the floor to a wide range of private and public stakeholders in order to discuss how all parties can work together more closely towards the common objective of achieving inclusive and sustainable growth in partner countries.
European Development Days was launched in 2006 as an opportunity for key partners to come together to in and inclusive and open environment and talk about how to make aid more effective. The six previous editions have featured Heads of State, Heads of Government or Ministers, and Nobel Prize laureates. The last edition in 2011, in Warsaw, Poland attracted more than 2 000 committed development stakeholders from over 139 countries.
Organised by the European Commission, EDD has global reach and provides a collaborative platform bringing together thousands of development advocates, decision-makers, and practitioners.

World leaders of citizen action, gathered in Montreal for the 11th CIVICUS World Assembly, have laid the groundwork for a new social contract, aimed at improving on the conventional political approaches that have failed in the face of today’s challenges and crises.
ALDA President, Mr.Oriano Otocan, and ALDA Director, Mrs. Antobnella Valmorbida, attended the event,  organised by CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation and the Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM) from 3 to 7 September in Montreal, and had as its theme “Defining a new social contract–making the future together”.

In the picture (Tristan Brand): Group of participants

Representatives of international civil society, who came from around 100 countries all over the world, had converged on Montreal to discuss critical time for civil society, not least for Quebecois and Canadian citizens, as we have seen great waves of people’s protests recently, but also recent cuts by the federal government for organisations in the areas of international cooperation, advocacy and the environment. The 2012 CIVICUS World Assembly was held in the same week that the people of Quebec elected their first woman prime minster, in the wake of a turbulent year marked by an unprecedented social crisis in which civil society played a major role.
“It’s important to remember today that democracy has changed. It’s now very clear that citizen participation is an essential complement to representative democracy. Citizens want to be consulted – and must be consulted – between elections”,  INM Executive Director Mr. Michel Venne said.
“There is a pressing need to overhaul our models of decision-making,” added CIVICUS’ Outreach Director Henri Valot. “Recent events like the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring and the Maple Spring clearly demonstrate that a growing number of people want to be heard and understood so that we can make the world more just and address issues like inequality, poverty and corruption. This 11th CIVICUS World Assembly represents a decisive moment for achieving progress towards making the world a fairer place”.
The event brought together a number of important public figures, among which Léo Bureau-Blouin, former student protest leader and now youngest ever member of the Quebec national assembly, renowned environmental activist and former Brazilian Minister of Environment Marina Silva, and Forum des Alternatives President Kamal Lahbib, who was sentenced to five years in prison for belonging to a secret revolutionary organisation during the former regime in Morocco.
The international summit was an opportunity for young protestors, activists and the instigators of movements such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the Maple Spring, to meet prominent individuals who have the power to influence international policies. Leading speakers included Caroline Anstey of the World Bank, Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International, Ana-Maria Garzón of the Sustainable Agriculture Network – Rainforest Alliance, and Olav Kjørven of the United Nations Development Programme. Many prestigious organisations were represented at the summit, including Amnesty International, the Rockefeller Foundation, ActionAid and ALDA, as well as a number of Canadian organisations such as the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, the Coalition pour la souveraineté alimentaire and Équiterre.

Montreal principles to guide civil society’s role in defining a new social contract

In order to help forge a new social settlement that is inclusive, democratic and just, we in civil society should:

Link, network, connect: form horizontal and consensual alliances, and unusual and smart partnerships.
Make connections between formal civil society organisations and new social movements and groups.
Mainstream social and communications technologies: prioritise making connections between online activism and offline action and excluded communities.
Encourage local participation and voluntary action as a first step for people’s real engagement in civil society.
Maintain community connections as a primary reality check and touchstone: regain and refresh the roots of civil society.
Be constantly aware of and address marginalisation of all those socially and politically excluded, particularly focusing on women, young people and minorities. Ensure safe spaces and accessible processes, promotion and advancement.
Promote the value of international solidarity for encouraging domestic and local action, and the protection of spaces for civil society.
Work within a human rights based framework and focus on the rights that enable people’s demands for dignity, freedom, justice and equality.
Be knowledge-based: develop communities of thought, as well as practice.
Integrate issues of sustainability: redefine what prosperity means and prioritise bio-diversity and the protection of nature.
Be demand driven, rather than supply driven, and accountable to citizens, not donor structures.
Limit our dependency on governments and be transparent about our funding compromises: seek alternative models, like social and crowd sourced funding.
Be innovative, strategic and have an assets-based approach: focus on entry points, tipping points, points of leverage.
Better understand and take account of the roles – positive and negative – of the private sector.
Develop our capacities for negotiation and analysis of power.

CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation is a global alliance of over 1,000 members and partners in over 100 countries. CIVICUS works to promote the emergence, growth and protection of citizen action.

The Institut du Nouveau Monde is a non-partisan organisation with the mission of promoting citizen participation and the renewal of ideas in Quebec. The INM’s aim is to encourage citizen participation, to contribute to the development of civic competence and to strengthen social cohesion and democratic institutions.