Civil Society Development: "Social exclusion is a priority to be addressed"
Date: Nov. 3, 2020

Civil Society Development (CSDC) will take part in the ARISE project to implement activities at community level. In Albania, in cooperation with the consortium member Children Are the Future, they will design and implement actions that will strength the integration of students into community life and that will raise awareness of local stakeholders on the impact of lower socioeconomic status on children's educational and personal development.

 

CSDC Durres promotes and supports civil society development in the Durres region by supporting, mobilizing and bringing together the most important actors from civil society and local government.  CSDC is very effective in the coordination and the empowerment of the civil society organizations and actors in the Durres area.

From many years of experience CSDC has impacted civil society organization and has successfully promoted collaboration, activism and networking of civil society organizations and local government. In addition to strengthening the existing civil society groups, the center also encourages and supports the creation of new organizations and community groups.

The center is constantly looking for new and innovative ways to foster collaboration between government and the non-profit sector and always receptive to the ideas of motivated individuals seeking to improve local conditions and strengthen Albanian democracy.
As a direct result of the assessment process, the municipality of Durrës has increased its support to several local non-profits, including social service based NGOs dealing with children and elderly.  

CSDC promotes political involvement in strengthening the legitimacy of local government institutions and the democratic accountability of political players.  It strives to make the actions of local government entities in the areas that CSDC works more transparent. By providing adequate support to civil society, CSDC Durres encourages active participation of NGOs and civil society in the decision-making process and defines its vision in the development of the Durresi region, based on an open and transparent process, which promotes the broad inclusion of civil society, local government, the academic world, the Durresi political spectrum and other groups of interest.  As a result, more people are informed about democracy and democratization which leads to increased participation of civil society and community members in local decision making processes. 

CSDC Durres has expanded its activity outside the urban center of Durres by addressing the needs of communities in the administrative units of Katund I Ri, Manze and Sukth (Durres Municipality). In working with the community, we deal mainly with school staff to address the main problems of children. We observe that communities in these areas are very vulnerable due to unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. These administrative units are also inhabited by Roma and Balkan Egyptian communities, who are constantly at a disadvantage. The earthquake of November 2019 brought for a part of the inhabitants the issue of  home demolition or  the necessity of repairing their houses. 

CSDC Durres considers social exclusion as a priority to address.

Through the ARISE project, CSDC Durres will tackle social exclusion addressing it on two levels: on the one hand, educational policies that can provide long-term solutions to create equality in education, and on the other hand school-level interventions that will address the emergency needs of students with low socio economic status (SES). 

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