Good governance is key to rule of law. And while issues of corruption, transparency, rule of law and good governance are always in the spotlight, there remains a lack of understanding and systemic problems that hardly receive sufficient coverage. The ACTION SEE project aims to raise awareness of such challenges by facilitating cooperation among civic organisations and consolidated strategic efforts for representation.
Among other things Accountability, Technology and Institutional Openness Network in SEE – ACTION SEE, also implemented a small grants scheme of 243.000 EUR for CSOs from the Western Balkans.
The ACTION SEE Small Grants Scheme was foreseen to provide support to civil society organizations to promote good governance and rule of law through a grant scheme awarding approximately 25-30 small grants to CSOs from Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo, through the following two types of grants, in the range between EUR 6.000 to EUR 8.000 per grant:
- Support to local CSOs to perform initiatives within one country.
- Support to CSOs to perform initiatives between two or more countries from the region.
It also provided support for targeted advocacy campaigns and policy initiatives that would contribute to achieving the following overall ACTION SEE objectives:
- Enhancing the involvement of civil society and media organisations in the creation of public opinion, policymaking and participation in the decision-making mechanisms;
- Increasing capacities of civil society to build its constituencies and tackle bold issues.
The initiatives supported by the Small Grants Scheme were focused on tackling rule of law and good governance issues, in particular anti-corruption, transparency, and access to information, data protection and use of public funds, within the following targeted areas:
- Free Access to Public Information Act (Freedom of Information)
- Financing of political parties
- Corrupt Public Procurement Practices
- Bribery Practices
- Privacy and Security
- Gifts/Sponsorship
- Election-related concerns
- Breach of Duty
- Cronyism,
- Other
The scheme targeted primarily smaller CSOs in order to provide a learning experience and help them build their capacities to fundraise and subsequently participate in grant calls by the EU and other donors. Furthermore, partnership with at least one media was required.
The Action’s methodology for the Small Grants treated designing and implementing grants projects as a learning process, particularly for smaller CSOs. This means that the applicants were supported with constructive feedback at all stages of the grant project – from their project proposal, to the development of their action plan, to managing grant finances responsibly.
The Small grants scheme resulted in awarding a total of 35 sub-grants (3 Kosovo, 6 Montenegro, 5 Albania, 6 BIH, 9 North Macedonia and 6 Serbia), to a total of 36 CSOs and 38 media organisaitons and outlets, all of which formed the ACTION SEE national networks.
More about the awarded grants can be read here, here and here.
Technical Assistance and Networking
Once the grants were awarded, aside from the financial support through the sub-grants, Metamorphosis monitored the grant implementation and provided technical assistance to all the sub-grantees based on their specific levels of competence. To facilitate the monitoring process, coaches were appointed by each Action Partner in each of the country during the grant implementation and reporting phase.
Technical assistance was provided through tailor-made coaching and mentoring for sub-grantees to strengthen their capacities and to respond to their specific needs, including financial management and reporting, public relations, organizational development, monitoring and evaluation, etc.
Capacity building was organized for the sub-grantees and other CSOs on writing policy papers, government research, oversight and advocacy, and thematic training (EU accession process, public spending, decentralization and division of competences). Reporting on issues related to anti-corruption, transparency and access to information, data protection, use of public funds and fight against organised crime and human trafficking were also part of the training curricula and particularly involved media organizations in the network.
ACTION SEE also supported the sub-grantees to develop and implement advocacy plans and build coalitions and issue- based networks. Moreover, ACTION SEE organized networking opportunities and networking meetings of sub-grantees for exchange of information, experience and lessons learned, discussion on actual problems, possible ways of resolving them, and possibilities for CSOs cooperation in addressing issues of common interest.
Results and impact
The sub-grantees, advocating at local level where they raised awareness of the local community on specific issues connected to rule of law and good governance, generated valuable results and impact that contributed to the overall goal of the ACTION SEE initiative. Below are only part of the most noteworthy results and impact.
In Kosovo, the NGO YAHR created a non-formal group composed by public servants, members of local assembly and media to demand transparency and accountability from local institutions. They advocated for the Municipality of Lipjan to publish the information of the public spending/contracts which with the help of ODK was realised as now all of this information is being published. In order to contribute to the availability of public spendings, a tool has been developed on Open Contracting Data Standards. The same tool was developed by ODK for Municipality of Prishtina.
In North Macedonia, due to their advocacy efforts, the sub-grantee Inkluziva was invited to collaborate with the Ministry for Labour and Social Policy, which further enabled them to have a joint action with Metamorphosis and the Agency for Protection of the Right to Free Access to Public Information for publishing of the video promoting access of people with disabilities. The video was published on the website of the Agency, and the websites of the municipalities Kumanovo and Kriva Palanka. The sub-grantee Coallition All for Fair Trials created a sub-domain on their website where there is a database for all the 20 high profile criminal cases initiated by the Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) in North Macedonia were presented. This is especially important as the website of the SPO is not available which is how the sub-grantee used this opportunity to advocate for more open judicial processes by bringing them closer to the citizens through a more transparent digital approach. The sub-grantee Institute for Strategic Research and Education developed the Budno Oko platform as a tool for monitoring public spending in the secondary education which improved the citizens’ access to a clear, comprehensive, timely and reliable budgetary and statistical information regarding secondary education financing. The creation of this platform further instigated a broader and further debate in the public, motivating other media to address this issue.
In Serbia, the sub-grantee Consumers Protection established a Call Center for Consumers which has persisted to function, this time with the support of the Serbian Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The sub-grantee CINK created an online database of the public figures at local level in three municipalities in the Rasina district containing their biographies and a history of political activities in order to inform the citizens more closely about the people who should represent their interests in the local authorities.
In Albania, the Social Contract Institute helped 4 small municipalities to develop and implement new tools for transparency such as Transparency Program, Registers of Citizen Requests and Complaints, and Right to Information Coordinator. These mechanisms are still in place and are being implemented from the municipalities. The Civic Resistance was very successful in pressuring public universities in fully disclosing their budget and real expenditures, which made possible further investigation from other media outlets and CSOs working in this sector. The sub-grantee was focused in making more transparent the budgets of the public universities in Tirana, Durres and Elbasan. This was a particularly successful initiative, as the issue of misuse of funds and lack of transparency from the public universities was one the most sensitive issues affecting the students. The issue was very well covered from the media, while it synchronised perfectly with the large students’ protest later that year which started in Tirana and stretched nationally. From those protests a series of policies have been pushed from the Ministry of Education, to improve the transparency of the public universities, as well as a better efficiency of the university funds. People in Focus used questionnaires to assess the performance in transparency and efficiency of the Administrative Court of Tirana, which was considered an innovation for this specific court of Tirana.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Association for Media and Civil Society Development (URMCD) created a show Faktograf as a countermeasure to the manipulative media content, which worked on educating and changing the audiences’ perspectives, through debunking of fake news and fact checking. The show features a subtle educational layer, through which it aims to train the viewers to recognize manipulative content in the future, as well as to make a clear distinction between information and disinformation, actual news and fake news. It was distributed to different platforms in order to bring this important fact-checking content to the widest and most diverse audience as possible, so that the change would be waster and more impactful.
The “Accountability, Technology and Institutional Openness Network in South East Europe – ACTION SEE” project is funded by the European Union and is implemented by Metamorphosis Foundation, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, CRTA – Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, Citizens Association Why not?, Center for Democratic Transition, Open Data Kosovo (ODK) and Levizja Mjaft!.
