Minutes from the Coordinating Team meeting
Banská Bystrica
November 12-13, 2004
Present:
Barbara Szczerbinska, Igor Stojanovic, Miljenko Dereta, Chuck Hirt and Anna Karailieva
Agenda:
1. Administrative issues:
 Web site of CEE CN
We have a new web master – Jaro Huba from Slovakia. He will continue to
manage CEE CN web site within the existing framework. He already updated web
pages of membership, history and events. He recommended adding a new section
of Photo gallery and CT members agreed with this. Recommendations from CT
members are to add one or two sentences of explanation what the national flags
mean (links to national web pages) and add list of donors including CEE CN
members that financially contributed to any of CEE CN’s events.
 Newsletter
We started to put together the fifth issue of CEE CN e-newsletter. Catalin, as the enewsletter editor called for contributions. The problem is that the same
organizations contribute all the time. Recommendation from CT is that
Coordinator of CEE CN should contact individually organizations that haven’t
contributed by e-mail or even by phone call. CT members also suggested using a
better design of CEE CN newsletter.
 Conference in Berlin
Anna Karailieva, CEE CN Coordinator was invited for Conference “Public
participation in urban development in the enlarged EU” in Berlin on November 34, 2004 to present CEE CN.
 Budget
CT members had a change to check the first year financial report of the second
grant from Mott Foundation. None of budget items were overspent, thanks to CEE
CN members’ contributions and OSF financial support. CT suggested sending
thank you letters to all member organizations that contributed financially to any of
CEE CN activities.
2. Evaluation of the 2004 Training and suggestion for 2005 Training
The 2004 Training was generally evaluated very well.
Recommendations for future training:
 Divide participants to the topic groups according their level of knowledge of
the topic
 Change participants within the working groups
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Find people with training skills to present material
Ask trainers for detail agenda, trainings materials and training methods in
advance and approve it by training committee
Organize a social events during training (ask in advance one or two member
organizations to host social events)
Organize a roundtable discussion during the training (it can be a formal way of
exchanges of experiences on certain topic as well as serve as a social event)
Hold sub regional trainings during the conference year
For management of the training, have the training committee and Coordinator
of CEE CN keep track of timeline (dead-lines), framework, etc.
Hold 2005 training again in fall
One possible topic could be training for trainers but only for civic activists not
for staff people of the member organization
Check with the previous chair person of the training committee about his
recommendation about committee status
3. Approving of the Pro-active plan and discussion about its implementation
Pro-active plan is our working document for the next two years. CT members agreed with
the plan and recommended to make a better format, conclude with goals and objectives
and send it to RT for their approval. We already started implementation as of July 1, 2004.
CT members agreed with the follow up activities regarding best practices as suggested in
the plan that the chairperson of that working group suggested.
4. Registration of a new entity of the Network
Chuck explained the basic issues about registration and the new situation after
registration. CT members commented on the draft of Bylaws. Their recommendations
were:
 Change objectives sections according to the latest version
 Add description of all bodies and describe connections between them
 Include statement that a new entity is continuation of informal CEE CN
 Prepare a letter for RT members which will clarify that new legal entity
represents the current Network and will be run by the same bodies.
 Ask a Slovak lawyer to explain Slovak the legal framework for establishing a
civic association in Slovakia and send this explanation to the RT members
Meanwhile Igor will find out how Transparency International is operating and Barbara
will check about the Orfeus Network as possible models of operation for our Network.
CT members signed the letter of founders of the new legal entity of the Network.
5. Membership
There was a discussion about the membership situation in countries where more that one
organization is a member of CEE CN. CT decided that Coordinator should write a letter to
the new organization in Ukraine that declared to be a member of CEE CN but didn’t send
the Application Form. CT members suggested having just one Representative from each
member country. CT voted in a new organization – Citizens Action from Slovakia but
with the condition that they will send more detail description of their organization.
Concerning expansion and increasing of membership CT decided that each member of CT
would contact some organizations that they think will fit to CEE CN (Igor and Miljenko
from Macedonia, Barbara from Latvia and Lithuania, Chuck from Kosovo, Anna from
Czech Republic).
6. Preparation for election process of a new CT member
We need to review the “Process of selecting the CT members” paper because of the new
situation in CEE CN. Igor will make some changes and develop the form of nomination
by December 15, 2004. Dead line for receiving proposals about respective candidates
from network's members is end of January 2005. Dead line for sending finalized materials
to RT from Anna is end of February 2005.
The election will be conducted during the next RT meeting.
7. Preparation of the 2005 Conference
Financial situation:
The host organization CI from Serbia already submitted a proposal for EU Agencies, they
will also ask for support of the Balkan Trust and Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. Chuck
will check the possible support from NED and GMF. We will ask also each member
country of their budget plan and possible contribution.
Participants:
3 civic activists, 1 representative of local authority, CEE CN representative and one staff
person of each member organization within the country should represent will be the
proposed make=up of each country delegation. About 25 US participants, 25 participants
from Serbia, donors and special guests such as a EU councilor etc, will also attend the
conference.
Content:
CT concluded discussion about the content with next topic areas:
 One year of experience in EU and presentation/discussion about preparation to
join EU to help citizens organizations of countries that will join EU in the next
enlargement to be better prepared and involved in preparation of things such as
their National development plans and access to the structural funds
 Citizens roles in elections
 Minorities issues
 Issues of youth in our communities
 Creating space for citizen participation from top down but also from bottom up
Miljenko will prepare a draft agenda of the Conference and send to CT by November 20,
2004. He will also check with his staff about the best date for Conference.
8. Further development of the Network
There was discussion about other possible funding for the Network. Barbara will send to
CT written information about the Global Grant of EU. We talked also about an idea to
establish a Victor Djorgov Award for some kind of activity within CEE CN.
9. Preparations for next Representative Team meeting
Giorgi suggested that the next RT meeting could be in Giorgia. Coordinator will check
with him regarding possible date and place, costs and Civitas Georgica contribution. All
RT members should find out their travel costs and procedure of obtaining visas.
Suggested agenda for next RT meeting:
 Legal issues of CEE CN separation and approval of internal documents
 Creating and approving the 2005 work plan
 Pro-active plan
 Conference up date and final preparations
 Preparation of the next proposal for Mott Foundation