My work in Belgrade this week is the real beginning of a great new relationship working with staff in the Serbian office of the Institute for Sustainable Communities (ISC). I've been working as a consultant to ISC for more than a year now on their Macedonian project; and I'm excited about the chance to expand that relationship in Serbia, a country I've grown to love over the past four years.
ISC's Civil Society Advocacy Initiative (CSAI) here in Serbia is just about one year old and will soon be announcing its first cohort of funded NGOs working to establish a culture of advocacy throughout the country. ISC describes the project this way:
“CSAI is a $12 million, five-year program that supports Serbian civil society in its ability to influence public policy, serve as government watchdogs, and conduct sustained advocacy campaigns on a wide variety of reform issues. The CSAI nurtures a healthy and vibrant civil society by focusing on the sector’s capacity to successfully advocate at local and national levels for the issues it defines, and to secure a legal and regulatory environment that fosters the long-term financial and operational sustainability of NGOs. The CSAI envisions the growth of civil society such that all people in Serbia identify themselves as citizens of a stable, democratic nation where participation is the norm, and personal responsibility contributes to a renewed sense of individual and national dignity.”
This is my third trip to Serbia this year already, with several more planned before the end of 2007. On this visit, my role is primarily focused on assisting Dragan, ISC Serbia's Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Coordinator, to prepare other ISC staff and external stakeholders for their role in conducting initial assessments of the new grantees. ISC has a few terrific tools they've developed for their many projects around the world including an Advocacy Index and the Seat at the Table Index (SATT), the two tools we'll be using in Serbia.
Gretchen works in ISC's Vermont office and is the program support manager with key responsibility for M&E. She is also in the office this week and I'm looking forward to becoming a part of this great team, which also includes Grant Officers Nina and Bogdan, and Training Specialist Aleksandra (Saska). There are other terrific staff I'm getting to know in the office and I'll have the chance to work with many of them over the next several months. Enrique Roig is the Country Director in Serbia and Nick Green is the Deputy Chief of Party.
I'll be spending a few weeks with ISC in July, conducting another round of assessments in order to write Common Ground's “Strategy, Action, and Results (START)” Reports for many of the new grantees. I'll return again in September to conduct Common Ground's new “Consulting for Consultants” Institute for the many in-country training and technical support experts who will be working on the project over the next few years.
