Representative Team meeting
Belgrade, April 17 – 19, 2011
Minutes
Present:
Zana Vokopola - Albania, Igor Stojanovic – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vasko Ivanov
Raychinov - Bulgaria, Drago Vrucinic - Croatia, Roman Haken and Ondrej Marek – Czech
Republic, Mate Varga and Csaba Madarasz - Hungary, Biljana Zashova - Macedonia,
Krzysztof Leonczuk - Poland, Viatcheslav Tcherniavski - Belarus, Nicolae Cuta - Romania,
Elena Shomina and Sergey Kuznetsov - Russia, Miljenko Dereta, Bojana Jevtovic and Jelena
Milovanovic - Serbia, Chuck Hirt - Slovakia, Jože Gornik - Slovenia, Dmytro Koval Ukraine, Paul Cromwell – ECON, Vadim Karastelev – Interlegal Foundation, Anna
Karailieva – CEE CN coordinator.
Representatives from Armenia, Georgia and Moldova did not get Serbia visa in time. CEBSD
representatives apologized due to personal health issue.
Agenda:
April 17

Meeting of the Coordinating Team

Introduction &dinner
Update on the work of all members’ organizations, CEE CN Annual report 2010
April 18
 Welcome, presentation and information from the host
Miljenko welcomed everybody and shortly presented the work of CI and the situation in
Serbia.
 Update summary from the CEE CN director
Chuck informed about implementation of our new strategy (CPU, activities during CPW, CP
study, Community organizing strategy, Youth strategy, E-participation ...) and our funding
changes (IVF, Grundtvig grant, EU operating grant). Our strategic partner CEBSD agreed to
help us to implement actions of our projects. Chuck also informed about relationship with
CoE and our contribution to translating the Code of Good Practice. He also talked about our
possible new development with Mott and some other groups that can help us financially or
with implementation of our activities. The major issue for us will be how to finance
participation on our events for our non EU members.
Comments on what we should also focus on:
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We need to be much more inclusive
Visibility and media events
Cultivating relations with funders
Address some possible solutions for funding for non EU members
To have a real sub-regional operation
We need to put issue of CP more visible on regional agenda, to establish our goal and
built on it. We should start to work towards outside.
To initiate a European event on CP. It would position our Network as an important
player in Europe. We need to be careful about our personal capacities.
CP study could be a very good entry to our outside activities.
Could we help to increase the frame of decision making in our countries? We should
develop some monitoring process what impact our activities (like CPU) have. We
should focus on what do we have and how we can do it more accessible for public.
To collect educational program where people can get the specialty on CP and CD.
We can start to negotiate to have a CP as a European campaign especially in the
European year of Active Citizenship.
We can offer CP as a tool how to avoid the manipulation
Funded activities: info and discussion on CP Study, CP University, CP Week,
ECON, Council of Europe, E-participation, Youth Strategy
E-participation:
We started implementation of e-participation three years ago. We built in our operating grant
10 000 Euro for 2 e-participation projects for this year.
Csaba informed about some ideas how to move forward with e-participation that they
developed with Simon Delakorda. What is the best way to know our members needs? One
possibility could be to open an “expert blog” and launch an idea contest to give us a good
background and provoke us what we can use for our outside activities. Another issue is how
to support and strengthen our inner e-participation.
We should find out:
o what the member organizations can add to the projects regarding the financial,
technical and human resources
o how to connect non EU members to our e-participation projects
Comments:
o We can organize our e-participation project around our activities as CPU, CPW.
o We can use e-participation project for how to reach people, how to promote Network
as well as for some educational activities.
o We should develop some youth project as they are the most appropriate population
who can use e-tools.
o Open distance learning tool – e-learning between two CPU’s.
o E-monitoring of local governments
Conclusion:
Everybody is welcome to send their suggestion to Csaba and Simon.
CP Study:
Joerg Forbrig from GMF is helping us to shape the framework for CPS. We created an expert
committee for the study. They met in November 2010 in Berlin and out of that we prepared
the outline for the study. Chuck explained what we want to do as a part of CPS.
Comments:
o To include some new and creative methods that are used in the other part of the world
(e.g. Ecotop method used in Australia)
o How to support the research activities by e-tools?
o To describe what we are doing properly is the main issue for us. Who is the audience?
– our member organizations, EU institutions, funders, …
o It would be nice to find some connections between case studies - to have the same
indicators/methodology that we can somehow compare the situation in different
countries.
o We have to assure that we include good practices to the study.
o Our goal is not to capture best practices but to describe what is going on in our
countries. We will want some best practices with this as well but this is not the most
important aspect.
Any other comments and suggestions will be very welcome. Our new CPS coordinator, Jana
Kunicka will contact all our members around the issue of CPS.
CPU:
Chuck informed about the common agreement about the place, date and primarily theme. He
asked for help to design the content of CPU.
The primarily theme will be to clarify differences between four community interventions advocacy, services, organizing and development.
The strategic question is how we will use our time together – just training and learning
program or can we also talk as well about our broader/Network agenda? (mixed model)
Comments:
It would be enough to discuss and clarify where are the boarders between different
approaches that we are using in our work.
It would be good to have more training focus and to be more open to other participants to
participate. But also it would be good to have late afternoon strategic meeting how to make
action plan out of the learning or discussions. We agreed on (3+1) day model.
Any suggestion for how to distinguish four community interventions, for good presenters on
this topic, technical or other help are welcomed.
CPW:
Date: September 19 – 25, 2011
Topics to promote:
o 2011 – the European Voluntary Year
o Youth and E-participation
o Code of Good Practice
Poster and other PR materials:
We want to develop a new poster as more countries are joining us also from Western Europe.
We have some money from EU grant for some PR material for CPW in our member
countries. Chuck encouraged country representatives to let us know ideas what should be
printed/prepared for them. We also have some money for renting space for local events.
We should organize some International media event or to prepare some film that could be
distributed through Youtube, Facebook, local TV, etc.
Community organizing work:
Community organizing work of ECON was taken under the CEE CN wings three years ago.
Last year it was extended indefinitely. Paul Cromwell from ECON presented ECON work and
latest developments. We should link our web sites and add Paul to the Network e-conference.

Working in groups on Youth Strategy
We worked in four working groups to share some info what our organizations are doing with
young people and develop new ideas and any suggestions what the Network could do to
support work of our organizations with youth.

Field visit
We visited Civic Initiatives office and had a chance to learn more about their work.
April 19

Election of a member of Coordinating Team
As we had no eligible members nominated prior to the meeting, each RT member was asked
to nominate one person. Elena Shomina was elected as a new member of CT for next three
years.
Report from the groups on Youth Strategy
Group 1:
o It is very important to deal with youth unemployment issue
o Moral and organizational support for youth participating – support letters, etc.
o Study tours for young people
o Involve youth in developing web sites for different projects
Group 2:
What Network can do for youth?
o We need a new promotion tool if we want to reach youth
o To prepare some E-tool (blog, portal) that could be used by youth
o To directly ask youth how to develop next steps
o Each member country could call one youth organization to have a youth
platform/partnership within the CEE CN
o Youth in action
o Civic education – to address the teachers to make some kind of curriculum for schools
Group 3:
o It is necessary to analyze how many CEE CN members deal with youth issues
o To invite youth leaders to our activities – e.g. to moderate a workshop on CPU about
youth problems
o Youth in action program for EU and non EU members – to organize some conference
o Volunteers
o How to combine opportunity of different project that support youth
o Organize a small working group in our Network that will deal with youth issues
Group 4:
o Specify the youth group – younger and older youth
o It is important to focus on youth leaders
o Possible youth section in our Network
o Include youth into E-participation
Comments:
Miljenko: It will be strategically wrong to separate youth from the work what we are doing.
We are Citizens Network that includes youth but we should give them a voice for their
specific issue.

Cooperation with ECON, CEBSD, ALDA and Interlegal Foundation:
presentation and suggestions from their representatives, discussion about
possibilities for future cooperation
Paul presented ECON a day before.
Anka presented CEBSD and their activities.
Biljana presented ALDA and especially their project Working Together for Development
where CEE CN is one of the partners. She opened the issue of joining each other Networks.
We created the group for CoE and EU issues: Igor, Biljana, Roman, Miljenko and Chuck.
Vadim presented “We, the Citizens!” group.
Roman presented European Economic Social Committee (www.eesc.europa.eu). He focused
on the 2013 Year of Active Citizenship and possible role for CEE CN.

Administrative/operational issues

Current membership, implementation of membership fee and
membership standard
Anka informed about current situation. Some members still did not pay the membership fee.
Maybe we should monitor how many hours we are working voluntary for the Network.
Network needs to confirm value for the membership fee.
We should follow the rules for membership. We can create a new section of the Network –
friends/volunteers of the Network. We should put in the Status of the Network “volunteer”
category and include youth to this category.
Estonian case:
CT will decide about Estonian membership.
 Sub-regional operation, contracts with sub- coordinators
Last year the sub-regional operation did not work very well so we decided to prepare a formal
contract for sub-coordinators this year. How can we make this work a little better?
Sub-coordinators briefly reported about their experiences so far.
Network expects a report from sub-coordinators according to the contract.
 Management of EU projects
CEE CN employed two more people to help with the management and coordination of EU
projects.

Future funding
There is a need to develop new sources to support the Eastern members of our Network. We
will need to pay special attention to this item in the coming years.

Two-year strategy: Mott proposal for 2012 – 13
Joze lead a brainstorming session on next two years activities.
Conclusion:
1. Two year campaign for legal changes and money
2. Mentoring
3. Online support/education – award and diploma
4. How to measure efficiency
5. New model of education of local leaders
6. Supporting new NGOs
7. Working for the campaign 2013
8. Creating an alliance for citizens participation
9. Open university for participation