Halifax Consulting and Cukarica Municipality join forces to strengthen capacity of civil society sector

During the first half of 2013, Halifax, within its CSR programme, worked jointly with the Municipality of Cukarica on building capacity of the civil society sector of this municipality, providing a number of workshops in the area of project planning and design.

The three-day training cycle started with the “Strategic and action planning” workshop run by Slobodan Milutinovic, professor from the University of Nis and expert in strategic planning. Through combination of lectures and practical work, around 20 participants from a variety of organisations went through the concepts of strategic planning for organisations, methods for stakeholder analysis, and how to achieve goals through developing and implementing an action plan.

The second workshop was about project planning and management. The participants held discussions and did group work, learning the basics of project planning segments, from defining objectives through activity planning to the issue of sustainability.

The third and final workshop was about communication in the NGO sector. The participants learned about concepts of communication, barriers to communication, how to get across to others who we are and what we want, and how to lobby for project financing.

The second and third workshop were run by Tanja Popovicki, a project cycle management expert and change management expert.

The president of “Cukarica – oaza Beograda” association of citizens, and one of the most active participants, Ms. Ljiljana Uveric, gives her opinion on these activities:

“We recommend to all CSO to participate in such training sessions as this is a sure way to increase their effectiveness and to serve the society in general by doing what they are registered for.

“Three participants from our organisation successfully completed these sessions. Only a few days after, we answered to 4 calls for proposals and were awarded one of them to be financed by the City Administration – Secretariat for Environmental Protection. At the moment, we are in application process for a tender opened by the Municipality of Cukarica, and encouraged by previous success, we are hoping for the best.

“None of this could have happened if Halifax had not been so successful in teaching and coaching us and being available during the entire application process.”

(Note: This is an integral text of a release issued by Halifax Consulting)