The Head of the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs, Mr. Igor Vidačak, met with the representatives of the Visegrad Fund, Mr. René Kubášek and Mr. Kristóf Forrai on 17 October 2007.
International Visegrad Fund (IVF) is an international organization based in Bratislava, which was founded by the governments of four countries, the so-called Visegrad countries (V4) – the Czech Republic, the Republic of Hungary, the Republic of Poland and the Slovak Republic in 2000. The Fund aims to promote the development and stronger cooperation among the four countries by providing financial support to joint cultural, scientific and educational projects, through exchange among young people, cross-border cooperation and tourist promotion.
At the meeting, possibilities for cooperation and exchange of experiences with Croatia were detected, since the Visegrad Fund is expanding its activity and provides support also to the countries neighbouring with V4 area.
Croatia plays an extremely important part for the Visegrad Fund by representing a gate to the Balkans for a great number of organizations from the V4 region. Grants are offered for the exchange of students from the universities of Visegrad countries and Croatia, as well as other Balkan countries, on undergraduate and postgraduate studies. The Fund is also interested in all projects connected with Visegrad, based on the cooperation of Croatian organizations with their partners from Visegrad countries.
A budget of 5 million euros a year that is at the Fund's disposal consists of equal contributions from each of the V4 countries and financial support is awarded in the form of grants, scholarships and artist residency programmes. Although artist residency programme is the only programme foreseen exclusively for the territory of V4 countries, scholarships and grants are also available to candidates from other countries, including Croatia. Financial support from the Fund is primarily given to civil society organizations, municipalities and towns and other local self-government units but also to privately owned companies, schools and universities, as well as individual students and artists.
Croatian civil society organizations have an opportunity to apply their project proposals for receiving financial support through grant programmes – the condition is partnership with at least two organizations from V4 countries, which has to be confirmed in the application with a letter from the partner-organization and application forms can be downloaded from the
Visegrad Fund website.
Croatian applicants for financial supports can also apply for student
scholarships.
Grants are paid retroactively and the calendar of competitions (a total of 10 deadlines a year) for each activity is available on
Visegrad Fund website.
You can find out more about the possibilities of International Visegrad Fund grants on our
competition pages.
The meeting with the representatives of Visegrad fund was concluded with an agreement on mutual efforts to establish successful cooperation between Croatia and V4 countries through possibilities of grants provided by the Visegrad Fund with the aim of achieving stronger cooperation and networking on the European territory after the accession of Croatia to the European Union, which is in the interest of the entire European region.
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