Kickoff meeting for the “Taking Action on Social Inclusion of Older People”

 

Between 9 and 11 March the Red Cross of Serbia successfully completed the first regional meeting, a kickoff meeting for the “Taking Action on Social Inclusion of Older People” project. The project has since February been implemented in five countries of the region with financial support provided through IPA fund of the European Union as well as Austrian Development Agency – ADA.  The project is coordinated by the Red Cross of Serbia with technical support provided by Austrian Red Cross. The project is a three year joint effort to strengthen the position of older people in the region so they can take part in decision making on matters that concern them, their communities and the society in which they live, as well as civil society organisations that should act as a functional link between older people and institutions of the system in order to ensure full respect of human rights and access to services as well as full participation of all citizens in their communities and the society.

Partners of the project are: Albanian Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Osmijeh NGO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonian Red Cross and Humanost NGO from Macedonia, as well as the Red Cross of Montenegro.

At the three day meeting, opened by the Red Cross of Serbia Secretary General Ms Vesna Milenović, the partners discussed the activities in the first year of the project during which each of the partners will work on strengthening civil society organisations active in advocacy for better inclusion of older people in the activities of their communities and the society. In the first year of the project each of the five partners will perform a situation analysis – a research of the legislative framework but also the analysis of the capacity of the civil society to successfully advocate on this topic – and then follow it with strategic planning that will take into account the necessary capacity building for the civil sector as well as the identified needs in terms of public advocacy. This will set the stage for research activities in each of the project countries that will focus on the chosen most relevant topic for the older population and the results of which will be the foundations of the advocacy activities for the course of the project.

The meeting also had a capacity building component: a session with the representatives of the Resource Centre of Technical Assistance for Civil Society Organisations in Belgrade, whose experts provided helpful clarifications to the partners on various technical details related to project management as well as the issues of the visibility of the activities. Also the expert of HelpAge International from the United Kingdom, Ms Bridget Sleap had a session with the project partners on data collection for efficient advocacy, as one of the preparatory activities for all the project countries

The partners finalised the meeting with detailed plans for the next quarter and established communication channels.