Metamorphosis Foundation and the project partners, through the project “Increasing Civic Engagement in the Digital Agenda – ICEDA”, co-funded by the European Union, are pleased to inform you that 15 sub-grants have been awarded through the second cycle of the small grant scheme LOT 2: Award grants for Digital Agenda Advocacy Initiatives.
The 15 small grants were awarded to civil society organizations from Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, which in the upcoming period, together with their media partners as part of the ICEDA network, will work on advocacy initiatives that tackle specific issues citizens from the Western Balkans face in areas covered by the Digital Agency and ICEDA.
Below you can find more information about the awarded small grants and the CSOs who have also become part of the ICEDA network, through which they will work together to promote digital literacy, skills and inclusion at the regional, national and local levels.
Albania
Instituti për Konsulencë në Marketing dhe Menaxhim (Institute for Consultancy in Marketing and Management – IMMC), together with Scan TV aims to implement the project “Improving the online public consultation process” through monitoring the implementation of the law no. 146/2014 “On Public Consultation”, analyzing the current effects and compiling a set of recommendations towards the National Agency of Information Society and Prime Minister’s Office. Under this proposal, IMMC is going to advocate through 5 articles on the implemented process of e-participation in Albania and a roadmap with at least three recommendations to initiate the change of the law no. 146/2014 “On Public Consultation”.
Qendra Orbis (Orbis Center) together with Fast News aims at “Advocating for better access of Albanian students towards e-services”. The main activities foreseen through this grant are an awareness raising campaign and a survey on the current e-services that are already available to this target group. Based on the survey findings they are going to create a list of recommendations and advocate in front of the National Agency of Information Society and the Municipality of Tirana for the creation of relevant e-services or improvement of the current ones.
Through the grant “Albanian Youth Fit for the digital age”, Young Professionals Network (YPN) in partnership with Politiko Center aims to mobilize young people to advocate for boosting the digital competencies thorough the future youth policies/strategies, as well as to develop at least four policy recommendations for the Albanian Youth Strategy 2022 – 2029. Their activities also aim at increasing the awareness of more than 500 young people on the Digital Agenda, reaching them out through TV shows, online articles and symposium.
Kosovo
Internews Kosova in partnership with Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN Kosovo) aims at implementing the project “Implementation of the Digital Agenda in municipalities” through which they have foreseen to: 1) Challenge Mayoral candidates with questions on advancing the Digital Agenda in 10 Mayoral debates during the electoral campaign; 2) Draft and publish 10 articles on the public pledges made by mayoral candidates regarding the advancement of the Digital Agenda; and 3)Draft and submit recommendations to the Ministry of Local Government Administration and the Ministry of Education, Science, Technology and Innovation on preventing and fighting cybercrime. Through these activities they aim at tackling digitalization at local level and giving higher importance to this issue in the community.
Next Generation Network together with Radio Televizioni 21, Radio Televizioni Dukagjini, Koha group and Radio 1, are going to work on the project “Increasing awareness and data gathering on online services platform eKosova” through which they aim at increasing the utilization of the platform eKosova by at least 20%, and making specific recommendations as well as advocating for the improvement of at least 1 e-service on the platform. Their activities include live demonstrations in 3 big cities in Kosovo and encouraging the users to provide feedback on the needed changes in the platform as well as ways to mitigate digital literacy and accessibility, 10 online meetings for gathering data and promoting the platform (eight in Albanian language, one in Serbian and one in Turkish language), advocacy meetings with the Information Society Agency, etc.
Kosova Center for Distance Education (KCDE) -Mëso Online partnered up with two media Sbunker and 7Arte in order to advocate for digital integration in education. Within their project “Advocacy for digital integration in the education system: Strengthening Distance Education in Kosovo” they will work on conceptualizing rules and regulations on online learning, as well as strengthening the Digital Agenda in Kosovo. Their focus is on comprehension of the situation in the online education system, Kosovar Consensus on e-learning Development, along with the citizen engagement in education and awareness-raising campaign.
Democracy for Development (D4D) Institute is implementing the project “Promoting digital services at the local level” together with the support of the portal Sbunker. Their main goal is to increase the discussion at the local level for the need to address the Digital Agenda, and to involve citizens in discussions with decision-makers to speed up digital processes. They will advocate on improving e-services while highlighting the need for digitalization through meetings with the municipalities Podujeva, Lipjan and Drenas, editorials, infographics, policy briefs with recommendations on the Strategy for the Modernization of Public Administration, etc.
Montenegro
Action for Social Justice from Danilovgrad with their project “Greater transparency and visibility in implementation of DA in Montenegro” and in cooperation with Crime & Corruption Network – Lupa, aims to strengthen the role of the civil sector and media in the implementation of the Digital agenda in Montenegro through developing an analysis of the legal framework for the draft of the Digital Transformation Strategy and provide recommendations for its improvement, and establish communication with relevant institutions as well as the coalition of CSO and media to help them advocate for the changes. In addition, they will strive to achieve their goals through a public campaign that will include journalistic stories.
Active Zone from Cetinje and RTV Cetinje will work towards connecting the world of technology, media, and educational institutions in Cetinje, to make the best possible use of the opportunities new technologies provide, covering current topics of digital education and the Digital Agenda. Their project “Local Initiative for the Digital Agenda – #LIDA” focuses on the establishment of the extracurricular activities on digital and media literacy in secondary schools in Cetinje, as well as the development of a manual for the work of Digital and Media Literacy Clubs in secondary schools and promotion of the targeted Digital Agenda topics on the local public broadcaster.
Center for Political Education from Nikšić partnered up with the Portal Onogošt and Municipality of Nikšić to create a new e-service for the city. With their project “3D – Digitalization + Democratization = Digital transformation” they aim to advocate for the faster and more efficient provision of services to citizens. They will work on raising the quality of communication with citizens, as well as increasing the level of knowledge about the activities of local government. Moreover, they will support the Municipality in the process of digitalization of the system and the creation of better e-services. The organization will work on increasing the initiative among citizens to communicate with the Municipality through the developed e-solution while raising awareness on the targeted Digital agenda-related topics in cooperation with their media partner.
“Parents on the Agenda” is a project to be implemented by NGO Parents from Podgorica. They will work on improving the understanding of the line institution for providing quality e-services that mainstream parenthood topics. Furthermore, they aim to increase the citizen demand for quality e-services through tailor-made podcast shows and awareness-raising by the parent CSOs. Their media support will be the portal Roditelji.me. Together they strive to promote and advocate for a multivariate approach towards the position of parents within the Digital Agenda by collecting input from the citizens, providing relevant feedback, and creating recommendations for improvement of the targeted Digital agenda-related topic.
North Macedonia
In partnership with Balkon 3, Centar for social innovations Blink 42-21 is implementing the project “mCommunity for e-community” through which they aim at ensuring high-quality e-services at local level and increasing the number of users of local e-services. They intend to do that through providing at least 3 new local government`s e-services through mCommunity in two more municipalities and thus enabling citizens to easily communicate with different sectors of those municipalities, as well as issuing policy recommendations to all 81 municipalities, Association of the units of local self-government of the Republic of North Macedonia and the Ministry of Local Self-Government for digitalization of services.
Together with Radio MOF and Portalb, Youth Educational Forum is implementing the project “Student action for digitalized educational services” which aims at improving the e-services provided for the students and addressing the digitalization in higher education. Through consultative meetings with the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) and student organisations, they intend to map out the students’ needs and create a policy brief consisted of specific recommendations for improvements of the digital aspects of the new Higher education strategy created by the National council for higher education. Moreover, they are going to organize a three-day Hackathon for digital tools/ solutions for higher-education, a result of which will be a new ready-to-use digital tool for students which they are going to offer to MES for free usage.
Serbia
Through the project “Together towards better e-government in small municipalities – through digitalization to transparent and accountable local government”, Center for democratic development Europolis in partnership with Glas Opova, will work on introducing new e-service in the municipality of Opovo based on the needs assessment of the citizens, supplemented by cooperation with the municipality in preparing the e-government Local Action Plan. The results of this process will further be utilized to initiate the policy change at national level in the field of digital literacy with a focus on vulnerable groups. The visibility of this initiative will be supported by a strong public awareness campaign through social media and partner local media.
Institute for Development and Innovation – IDI, together with Info Biznis.rs, aims at educating the citizens of the city of Čačak on how to use e-government services, with a special focus to e-Kindergarten service. Collecting and analyzing user experience throughout the project implementation will be used for proposing the redesign of this digital service to be more in line with the citizens’ needs. Furthermore, three policy recommendations on a national level will be produced and delivered to decision makers, concerning the process of digitalization in Serbia, with special attention to analyzing the availability of e-Kindergarten services by cities in Serbia and the process of obtaining subsidies for kindergartens.
The project “Increasing Civic Engagement in the Digital Agenda – ICEDA” is implemented by the Metamorphosis Foundation (North Macedonia), the Academy of e-Governance (Estonia), Levizja Mjaft! (Albania), CRTA – Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (Serbia), NGO 35mm (Montenegro) and ODK – Open Data Kosovo (Kosovo). The project is being implemented with financial support from the European Union.
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