Minutes from the Coordinating Team Meeting
Budapest
December 16 - 17, 2005
Present:
Miljenko Dereta, Chuck Hirt, Giorgi Meskhidze, Igor Stojanovic, Barbara Szczerbinska and
Anna Karailieva
Agenda:
1. General evaluation of the second grant period (2004 -2005)
Chuck evaluated last two years of CEE CN work and specifically highlighted separation of
CEE CN, implementation of Pro-action plan including Citizens Participation Week, holding
Conference including Trans-Atlantic Day and conducting trainings including on line training.
2. Evaluation of the 2005 activities
Conference
Miljenko evaluated the Conference. From perspective of participants the Conference was very
successful. From Miljenko´s evaluation and subsequent discussion there was several
suggestions for representative of the member countries who nominate participants for the
Conference:
 Nomination/selection process of participants should be more serious
 Hold preparatory meeting of participants in each country and also evaluation meeting
after the Conference
 Give people more responsibilities (some role) during the Conference
 Ask member organizations to raise some money for the Conference
Our American colleagues who attended the Conference and prepared Trans-Atlantic day want
to continue in some limited way in cooperation. As they are not organized in the same way as
our Network we need to take initiative for further cooperation.
CPW
Anka evaluated the Citizens Participation Week. Everything is on web page of CPW. From
26 members contributed 21 organization to the photo exhibition, plans of activities during
CPW sent 7 organizations and reports with pictures about the activities during CPW sent 11
organizations. From that reports is obvious that the most active organization in organizing the
first Citizens Participation Week were Hungarian Association for Community Development,
International Association “Civitas Georgica” and Centre for Community Organizing –
Slovakia. Suggestions from CT members:
 Organize one common activity during CPW in each member country. This activity
could be founded from CEE CN. We should decide about this activity during next RT
meeting.
 Better share with each other what happened
 CPW is project itself – we should find person who will be able to write project
proposal and also be responsible for implementation of the project and play leadership
role for it. The suggestion was to ask Mate from HACD.
Training
Giorgi evaluated the Training. Regional training based on language is cost effective and also
on-line training was a really good solution for the situation when our Albanian member
organization could not raise any money for the training. The feedback from the training in
Armenia was very positive. There were a number of complications in preparing this training
as much of it had to be done last minute due to the cancellation of Albania part of the training.
On-line training created learning resources for the Network (it could be part of the knowledge
bank). There were some concerns raised about the effectiveness of the on-line training and
how it ended but overall, there was agreement that it had been a valuable experience. CT
agreed that the training team should continue to work and chairpersons will be Giorgi and
Nicu. They will come with the recommendation for the 2007 training to the next RT meeting.
3. Report after first year of CEE CN as the independent entity
Chuck made a brief report and he will send the written report to the CT members as well.
4. Discussion of the work plan 2006
Part of our normal operating are:
Best Practices database
CT and RT meeting
Training
Citizens Participation Week
Separate CT meeting
E-newsletter
On the last RT meeting we discussed also:
Citizens Forum
Creation of the Knowledge bank
Comparative analyze of the legislation in our countries in terms of CP
Follow up with the Trans-Atlantic issue
 Best Practices database
We will ask trainers of the last training (Rubina, Gleb and Nicu) to collect best practices from
the trainees. The deadline for the collection will be end of May and we will publish it by end
of August. Follow up of the publishing the best practices database: Network should
encourage members to implement at least one of the best practices and few of them will be
presented in the next Conference. On the Conference should be also a workshop about best
practices where will be a room for these organizations who implemented new best practice
from the best practices database.
 E-newsletter
Igor will send us format of e-newsletter that CCI is using and he will ask his PR staff if they
are willing to put together and distribute twice a year the CEE CN e-newsletter.
 Citizens Forum
Center for Community Organizing from the Czech Republic offered to the Network
participation on the International Forum that they are going to organize next year. It provides
for us an opportunity having the first Citizens Forum in conjunction with one of our member
activity. CT decided to actively promote this Forum among the CEE CN members and Chuck
will discuss personally this possibility with the Czech organizers at the end of January 2006.
 Creation of the Knowledge bank
The idea was to collect useful and practical information for member organizations. There can
be a special section of our (members of CEE CN) production. We should develop project of
on-line training and knowledge bank could be part of this project. We will ask Nicu and other
people who have experience in on-line training to write a short manual how to participate on
on-line training called Specifics of on-line training. CT agreed that Knowledge bank team will
consist of Barbara, Anka and Gleb.
 Comparative analyze of the legislation in our countries in terms of Citizens
Participation
CCI from Bosnia and Herzegovina is working on the project of clarifying if Citizen
Participation is defining in the law and how. They wish to include Poland, Slovakia and
Bulgaria into the work. We can consider this project as a pilot one. Igor offered to simplify
the survey that they used and send to the all CEE CN members. We would discuss at the RT
meeting how we will do this research throughout the CEE region.
 Follow up with the Trans-Atlantic issue
On the Conference, there was predominance of skills and interest about information
technology (IT). A suggestion was made to get back with them and discuss the possibility of
setting up the capacity to provide IT service that we can offer to our members. It could be
great support for host organization of the 2007 Conference. Even though a majority of our
activities are and will be oriented into engagement of people, these technologies are important
for the future (mapping, e-voting, e-learning, …).
CT decided to add to plan also support for Belarus (we are open to their initiatives, they can
use the Network for their support) and to share (good and bad) experiences of new EU
members (it could be valuable and interesting also for candidate countries and other
countries). We will talk more about it on the next RT meeting.
5. Membership
CT voted in two new members – CRONO from Romania and OWOP from Poland. In order to
appeal to countries where we don’t have members we could ask Estonians to make a link with
Latvia and Lithuania before the Conference. Also we should create the mailing list for our enewsletter including countries where we don’t have any members and use this approach to
address them.
6. Preparations of the 2007 Conference
 Select the Conference site
CT made the conditional decision about the host organization for the next Conference that
will be final after consultation with Estonian NGO Round table.
 Conference team
Chairperson will be from the host organization, member of the team are Chuck, Anka, Vlado
and Igor S.
 Suggestions for Theme and Program of the Conference
Topic and program will be discussed at the next RT meeting and on the CT meeting in
Estonia.
 Discussion about the financial resources
Estonians have some significant indication of support from the government, we submitted
proposal for European Commission, we will ask member organization to contribute as well
and also there will be limit for travel expenses.
7. Further development of the Network
This item was covered under point #4 – Work Plan.
8. Administration of the Network
CT discussed a new PR material, the first annual report, CT election and grant management.
The new material that was prepared was approved with minor revisions suggested. Anka will
proceed with getting the material printed.
9. Preparations for next Representative Team meeting
As the date for the next CT and RT meeting CT suggested April 7-9, 2006. Prague was
mentioned as a possible site for this meeting and our Czech members will be asked if they are
able and willing to help us to organize the event.