Held public consultation on the support measure „Civil Society“ within the Swiss-Croatian Cooperation Programme

Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs (GOgNGOs) acting as the Executive Agency within the Swiss-Croatian Cooperation Programme carried out the public consultation on 16 June 2023 in the Hotel Dubrovnik, in Zagreb with the interested representatives of the CSOs, public institutions and units of local and regional self-government on the support measure planned for the thematic area „Civil society and transparency“ in the continuation of the implementation of this Programme (so called the second Swiss contribution), aiming to more quality preparation of using of available funds.

Public Consultation was held in a hybrid form with an online broadcast through the GOfNGOs YouTube channel where you can watch the recording..Short report/notes are available here.

Public consultation started with an opening speech by Helena Beus, authorized to perform the duties of the director of the GOfNGOs and Stela Fišer Marković, national programme coordinator at the Embassy of the Swiss Confederation in Croatia.
Natalija Laštro and Kristina Tatarović, the representatives of the Ministry of Regional Development and EU funds, the National Coordination Unit, also participated in the public consultation. On 8 September 2022, the Croatian Government approved the conclusion of a Framework Agreement between the Croatia and Switzerland on the implementation of the Second Swiss Contribution in the field of cohesion for Croatia. The approved Framework Agreement provides Croatia with 45,7 milion Swiss francs of which 7,62 million is intended for civil society.

The Head of Department for Strategic Planning, Programming and Informing Jelena Princivali, held a brief presentation while presenting the 4 components: Education for Sustainable Development, Strengtjening volunteering, Micro projects and Service Learning programmes in the Community.
The four proposed programme components (Education for Sustainable Development, Strengthening of volunteering, Micro projects and Service Learning programmes in community) resulted from the needs analysis carried out as part of the programming process for the use of European Structural and Investment Funds for the financial period 2021-2027. Furthermore, proposed programme components are the result of the consultation process with CSOs in the period of crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and earthquakes (Zagreb/Petrinja/Sisak) used for the analysis of the needs assessment of CSOs with the aim of the CSOs capacity building.

The goal of the public consultation was to discuss the thematic areas under which the Second Swiss Contribution will be implemented in the period from 2024 till 2029 as part of the Swiss-Croation Cooperation Programme.
The participants mostly agreed that the thematic areas were well chosen. Also, the participants asked questions that were mainly focused on details of calls within each of the component that will be a subject of information workshops planned to be organised before each of calls.
More information on the 4 components planned within the Second Swiss Contribution are available in the presentation.

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