SAM.I. Secretary General visits new partners in Croatia and Macedonia

Over the last few weeks, Secretary General Ivo Bonamico visited two organisations that expressed their interest in future cooperation with SAM.I.

On 17 February, the SAM.I. delegation met with the organisation SRCE from Croatia, an association of children with development disabilities, disabled people and their families. SRCE provides a variety of social services for this target group. Part of their primary goals are to bring children with and without disabilities together and to create community support that provides a dignified life and equal opportunities.

SRCE director Jelena Kovacevic showed the SAM.I. delegation their local activities and informed them about their numerous previous projects, which they conducted with a variety of international and national partners, donors and grant-givers.

On 3 April, SAM.I. representatives travelled to the Macedonia, to meet the local NGO „Community Development Institute“ (CDI). CDI works in volunteer training to support the social and economic development of mostly rural communitites.

Director Sreten Koceski invited the guests from SAM.I. to visit one of the working meetings of local stakeholders. There, they could gain a first impression of the bottom-up approach to foster civic commitment that CDI is working on. In this particular case, volunteer trainers were in the process of learning about new equipment meant to improve the livelihoods of local agricultural producers. CDI has a long history of conducting community-based projects like this with the support of international or national grants and also have extensive experience in EU-funded projects.

SRCE and CDI will present their organisations as membership applicants at the next meeting of the presidium, which is scheduled to take place on 4 May in Brussels.