Well, if I thought my last day in Belgrade would be spent quietly preparing for my trip back home, was I ever wrong!
I began the day by meeting with the new ISC Country Director for Serbia and his colleague and ISC Training Director. ISC has been working in Serbia for a few years, but they now have a new project modeled after that which is occurring in Macedonia. Given that the countries are next door neighbors and that I have considerable experience both with ISC and the NGO sector here in Serbia, I am hoping to be able to provide support to this exciting new civil society initiative.
The meeting was a great opportunity to get to know some of the people who will make it all happen.
Following that meeting, I accompanied the training director to a meeting at Civic Initiatives, an extremely well-known NGO here in Belgrade. I've known about the organization for awhile now and one of their staff participated in a fundraising training I did in Belgrade last year. Many in Belgrade regard Civic Initiatives as the moral compass of the NGO sector here.
Next, I was off to lunch with my friends from Youth of JAZAS and a former Assistant MInister of Health and physician who is a terrific supporter of JAZAS and very involved still in HIV/AIDS prevention and care.
From there, we went to a political reception (Serbian elections are January 21st) for a candidate for Parliament named Čedomir “Čeda” Jovanović. He's running an excellent campaign that seems to be attracting a lot of young voters and really shaking up the status quo. In Serbia, there are 106 political parties, so his candidacy is not without controversy. Lots of rumors and innuendo.
Meeting him, however, was for me like meeting Barack Obama for the first time 13 years ago. He is extremely smart, very personable, always smiling, full of hopeful, positive energy. It will be interesting to see what happens with the elections, though he is expected to win.
Finally, my day ended with Milos, Dragana, Karlo, and I having cake at the wonderful Tea House at the Belgrade Hyatt. I've stayed here at least one night on every trip I've made to Belgrade and moving here tonight (from Dragana and Milos' home) makes the 6am flight easier on both me and them.
We had a great chance to relax, celebrate Milos' becoming a doctor (see the last post), and talk about our work together in the future. It was a great end to a great day.