Meaningful Activism, Knowledgeable Engagement and Responsible Solutions (MAKERS)
The Project aims to improve social cohesion among various ethnic groups in partner municipalities, by improving municipal governance practices on public participation, supporting community activism and capacitating youth for leadership in their communities and beyond and promoting joint action on shared priorities.
The Project’s goal and Project objectives will be achieved by working on several dimension of social cohesion, most notably: civic participation, trust in people and institutions, acceptance of diversity and solidarity and voluntarism. The project will work to strengthen and institutionalize the local dialogue platform mechanism (LDP). This will be done through mentoring of the LDP and supporting municipalities representatives in strengthening their capacities to use and facilitate LDPs independently. The Project will also try to empower young activists to co-facilitate platform meetings in the municipality. Additionally, UNDP will work the local government to ensure local dialogue platform methodology is endorsed by the municipal council and becomes a recognized consultative mechanism. The Project will steer inter-municipal and community cooperation and focus on common priorities. Through inter-municipal learning network, municipalities will be able to learn about the benefits of local dialogue platform. The Project will also support local CSOs through small grants.
The main goals of the Project:
- Neighboring municipalities coordinate across boundaries and with other levels of government to address local, regional, national issues
- Municipalities, citizens and young active citizens work together in partnership to take effective action on community challenges at the local level
- Fifteen municipalities endorsed LDP methodology and created LDP Coordinating bodies
- More than 30 LDPs organized
- Twelve initiatives raised and submitted to local governance as a result of LDP
- Municipality representatives trained to independently organize and facilitate LDP
- Around 50 youth trained in different skills, such as leadership, communication, activism, usage of online communication/workshop tools and similar.
- In cooperation with Regional Dialogue for the future Programme and OSCE, creation of three murals in MAKERS partner municipalities has been agreed. The development of murals is part of the OSCE initiative on the 25 years from Dayton peace agreement.
Contact:
Mirza Puzić, UNDP, mirza.puzic@undp.org