Signed Agreement from the Second Swiss Contribution for programme “Civil Society”

7,6 million CHF for ensuring enabling environment for the civil society development

Minister of regional development and EU funds Šime Erlić and the Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation His Excellency Urs Hammer signed the agreement from the Second Swiss Contribution, by which 7,6 million of Swiss Francs is made available to Croatia as a support to the civil society.
 
Helena Beus, authorised to perform the duties of the Head of the Office, attended the signing ceremony on behalf of the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs (GOfNGOs) which will perform the role of managing this programme with the aim of further ensuring enabling environment for building civil society as one of the elements of ensuring the development of society as a whole.
 
The Programme will be implemented through 4 components - education of sustainable development, strengthening of volunteering, programmes of service learning in community and micro projects.
General goal of the programme for civil society is to strengthening democratic structures and processes through civic engagement in order to decrease economic and social disparities in the Republic of Croatia (RoC).
HE the Ambassador Hammer expressed his contentment that the Croatia and Switzerland have decided to continue the successful cooperation in the field of civic engagement. That will allow to the Switzerland to share their experiences in mobilising of civil society as developing factor that has helped to build the stable Switzerland founded on the innovations and pluralism.
He emphasized that the civic engagement is the essence of democracy. He is anxious to see how the CSOs ideas will be implemented in practice.
 
The first call for grants for CSOs is expected to be prepared in the coming months. The Call will be published on the GOfNGOs web page, as well as the Swiss-Croatian Cooperation Programme web page.
 
The Swiss contribution to Croatia and the monitoring of implementation of programmes financed by the Swiss funds are carried out by the Ministry of Regional Development and European Union Funds. They do so together with the relevant state administration bodies responsible for the implementation and monitoring of projects in cooperation with the Swiss State Secretariat for economy, Agency for development and cooperation, as well as the Office for Swiss Contribution within the Swiss Embassy.
 
More information on Swiss-Croatian Cooperation Programme are available on the web page www.swiss-cro.hr and GOfNGOs web page.

News