שתיל - שירותי תמיכה וייעוץ לקידום שינוי חברתי

Two representatives of the Europe-based Association of Local Democracy Agencies (ALDA) spent six intensive days visiting Shatil last week, marking the beginning of a meaningful cooperation between ALDA and Shatil as well as ALDA and other Israeli civil society organizations. ALDA focuses on active citizenship, equal opportunities and sustainable economic development throughout Europe and are now expanding their activities to the Mediterranean area.  They felt Shatil was the perfect match with which to initiate this expansion – an organization with which they could collaborate and which could serve as a networking force to other bodies. A workshop they led on ways of building collaborations between Israeli and European NGOs and local authorities was so oversubscribed that a larger venue had to be found. More than 40 NGO and local authority representatives learned how together, they could make a stronger impact. Several ideas for cooperation were born at the workshop, including connecting organizations advocating for bike paths in Israel with a festival on the issue in the former Yugoslavia; bringing together representatives of local council members in the periphery with European municipalities to share experiences about building the capacity of volunteers in emergency situations such as war, floods and terror attacks; and connecting Israeli women's organizations working for economic empowerment with European micro credit bodies."Opportunities opened up for cooperation on projects within Israel and beyond," said one workshop participant. "We will definitely try to implement some of the ideas suggested."During the ALDA visit, Shatil organized the above mentioned workshop and set up and participated in meetings for ALDA with the Haifa and Acco  municipalities, where the ALDA representatives suggested the development of joint dialogue projects between local civil society and local authorities, based on a model used throughout Europe. They also met with Shatil staff, including the Conflict Transformation and Management Center (CTMC,) members of the steering committee of Shatil's Haifa Joint Living Project, and Shatil's director, Rachel Liel."We hope this will be the beginning of a very fruitful cooperation" said Srdjan Cvijic, ALDA's Policy Officer for European Affairs and Field Operations.   Shatil is looking forward to further cooperation with ALDA. ALDA is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1999 as a small initiative of the Council of Europe's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities to coordinate a network of Local Democracy Agencies (LDAs.)  The LDAs are local NGOs that foster human rights and local democracy, usually based in periphery towns in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus regions, and work as partnerships between local civil society, local authorities and municipalities or partner organizations in other European Union countries.