“100 Civil Society Organizations will be selected in the scope of “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project. It is anticipated that 60 organizations will be from the regions and 40 from Yerevan city,” Miss Syuzanna Soghomonyan, Coordinator of CSO-Government Dialogue of “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project informed the participants of the second Focus Group.
She also said that the selected CSOs will pass training, which is aimed at first to the development of the CSOs’ monitoring capacity of the organizations; second: providing skills for the development of evidence based policies; third: promote the dialogue between government and civil society organizations; and fourth: development of CSOs capacity for the creation of coalitions.
15 CSOs from the overall amount of the selected organizations, which will create coalitions, will have opportunity to participate in the second stage, where they will gain advanced skills.
The project has large sub-grant component which amounts to 875 thousand Euros. Grants will be provided to around 24 CSOs and coalitions. There are two objectives: conducting monitoring of target areas and policy development.
Today the members of focus group focused on the identification process of the target issues.
Syuzanna Soghomonyan also reminded that last year the law of the republic of Armenia on Public Organizations was entirely changed. “We shall provide free legal consultancy regarding this, including professional advice to NGOs on developing charters based on the new law,” she said.
After the meeting, several NGO representatives expressed their views on the key issues pointing out the problems, which according to them exist in our reality and need urgent solution.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by the “Armenian Lawyers’ Association” NGO in cooperation with its partners; Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS, “International Center for Human Development” Public Organization, SME Cooperation Association and Union of Communities of Armenia.
Details in the video.
Gevorg Tosunyan
Aleksander Sargsyan
