Minutes from the Representative Team meeting
Zagreb, May 1 –2, 2004-05-09
Present:
Edlir Vokopola –Albania, Rubina Ter-Martirosyan – Armenia, Igor Stojanovic – Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Krasimir Kirilov – Bulgaria, Mirala Despotovic – Croatia, Jiri Danes – Check
Republic, Angelika Rehema – Estonia, Giorgi Meskhidze – Georgia, Ilona Vercseg –
Hungary, Barbara Scerbinska – Poland, Viatcheslav Tcherniavsky – Republic of Belarus,
Nicolae Cuta – Romania, Natasa Duricic – Serbia, Chuck Hirt – Slovakia, Natalia
Sukhodolska and Edward Zakharchenko – Ukraine, Frangulea Catalin – CEE CN e-newsletter
editor, Drago Vrucinic and Milan Medic – hosts of the meeting, Anna Karailieva – CEE CN
coordinator
Agenda:
 Facilitated discussion on the pro-activity of the Network
 Report from the Coordinating Team meetings
Barbara reported from the CT meeting in Belgrade, October
2003 – everybody received
minutes from this meeting. She also reported from the CT meeting in Zagreb, April 30, 2004.
CT voted in two new members of CEE CN – URI from Albania and People’s Voice Project
from Ukraine. Two other organizations have expressed interest in joining the Network and
will be voted on when their applications are received.
 Approval of agreement about procedure for future election of members of
Coordinating Team
Igor S. presented material that he prepared and the new procedure for electing members of the
Coordinating Team were approved. It was agreed that they would be implemented at the
2005 meeting. Igor reported on the lottery that took place in October 2003 where the three
year rotation was selected. The terms for replacement will be as follows:
Victor Djorgov’s term in
2005
Igor Stojanovic’s term in
2006
Barbara Szczerbinska’s term in
2007
 Annual (or two year) theme - “Local dialog with authorities”
Igor S. explained the background of this idea that came from the Coordinating Team’s
evaluation of the 2003 Conference in Laktasi. The idea for selecting a theme could provide a
more concrete orientation in the next period of the Network work. It is also an expression
what is important in our work that we want to pay special attention. There was a long
discussion if the Network should agree on some theme or not. For some people it made sense
to have a theme that very well fit to our pro-active approach, it could encourage us to fill in
some gaps in our legal regulations in different countries bringing some initiative from the
Network to the legislation process, simply it could bring more activity to the Network. For
others didn’t make any sense to talk about theme as a frame for our work before we are not
clear on the subject/issue that we are ready to work together about. Also they felt that having
the theme would somehow limit our activities. The other aspect of the discussion was if there
was to be a theme, whether it should be for one or two years. There was general agreement
that the two year idea was more appropriate. The conclusion to this topic was to send it back
to the Coordinating Team for further consideration.
 Training 2004
Giorgi presented suggestions for the training that came form the training group. There were
several different options considered:
1. two trainings
 advanced level (primary for NGOs, members of Network)
 community level (for community leaders)
2. training of trainers followed up by sub-regional/country trainings
3. trainings on sub-regional level
It was suggested first to agree on training form, and then discuss the topic, as it was different
for NGOs and community leaders.
There was discussion about the form of training. The conclusion of the discussion was that,
having in mind the mission of the Network (to give more power to our community leaders),
we should prepare training as an international event for our community leaders who could
implement practice from the training, not just pass on the information from the training. The
conclusion to this then would support the first option of two levels of training at both the
community level and an advanced one as well.
Using the pro-active approach of the Network, we can after training prepare a program in
which volunteers will work in certain projects in another country. This fits with the CEE CN
mission and objectives ("provide opportunities to grassroots initiatives to learn" and "increase
skills and capacities of citizens to more effectively participate in local and national
development") and with CT's recommendation for a strategic theme for a two year period
which would focus on dialog with the local authorities.
From the brainstorming about the topic for training and then making preferences, the group
decided on the next two topics:
1. Community based organizations development/community organizing
2. Economic revitalization
It was decided, that the final decision about the two levels of training will be made by the
training committee taking into consideration the training host country suggestions.
C.E.G.A. from Bulgaria represented by Krasimir Kirilov offered to organize the training in
September 2004. Krasimir asked for a very clear requirement about the training from the
training group by the end of May. There was a suggestion to find out resources of trainers
between us and send CVs to Anna, Coordinator of the Network.
 Trans-Atlantic partnership
Chuck described the background of this idea that came again from the last Conference in
Laktasi where Paul Vandeventer from Community Partners, USA was present. Paul expressed
his interest to cooperate with our Network and to recruit a larger delegation for the 2005
conference. On the CT meeting in Belgrade, a decision was made that we will hold a separate
Transatlantic Day in addition to 2005 Conference. The Coordinating team along with Paul
organized the planning meeting for this event in January 2004 in New York. Notes from this
meeting are attached. The one important development from the New York meeting was that
the American representatives agreed they were interested in a longer term relationship and
that this would not just serve as a one-time event. Chuck encouraged everyone to pass names
of potential US friends to participate to Paul, Chuck or Anka.
 Conference 2005
Natasa from CCI in Serbia introduced her organization as the host organization for the
Conference and also informed about possible funds from local USAID, Freedom House and
NOVIB. There is also opportunity for us to send a proposal to GMF specially about the TransAtlantic partnership. The Conference will be in May 2005 in Belgrade. The Representative
team suggested that middle May might be best and asked to be notified when the date is
determined.
Brainstorming about possible topics included the following items:
 Profit and non-profit collaboration
 Social responsibility
 Partnership for better results (public-private partnership, citizens and authorities,…)
 Political responsibility of NGO´s
 Local social economy
 Civil society cooperation and building community structures
 Integration with EU structures
 Community development
 Effective methods of promoting democratic values
 Minority/diversity
 How the civil society deal with nationalism, racism or any kind of extremism
 Civil education and its implementation in the primary and secondary schools
 Increasing accountability of the local authorities and monitoring them
In addition to the topics we should have on the Conference:
 Presentation of some of our best practices
 Discussion about preparation of the Citizens Participation Week in September 2005
 Field visits connected to the work of CCI in Serbia
 Preparation of some kind of declaration (request of the CP week to the UN) that will
come out from the Conference
 Other team leaders reports
Catalin, our e-newsletter editor, discussed his work for the Network. He said that usually he is
receiving enough contributions for the topic section of the newsletter but only a few for the
news section even it should be only 10-15 lines. Catalin suggested to name one volunteer
from each organization as a CEE CN correspondent and send his/her name to Catalin and
Anna, Coordinator of the Network. Then Catalin will cooperate about the e-newsletter
directly with these correspondents. It was requested that everyone also send a list of the enewsletter recipients to Anna.
Catalin also proposed the best practices check list:
1. Description of the environment/frame work that led to the implementation of the
program
2. Objectives of activities
3. Short description of the implementation of the process
4. Achieved impact and lessons learned + recommendations
5. Contact and availability of information
The group agreed on this check list as well as on following rules:
 Length of the material should be max 3 pages
 Don’t forget to stress why you consider this as a success story
 What was the most important things that contributed to the success
 Catalin will create a list of terms and everybody who will send a success story
will choose 5 terms from this list as key words to be used for searching
 Creation of the new legal entity for the CEE Citizens Network
Chuck introduced this issue, which had been discussed at the Coordinating Team meeting.
He explained that the reason for considering a change in considering a new separate legal
entity was that this was mainly a natural evolution and maturity of the Network to one of
independence. A second factor is that it is now clear that the Network may be interested in
applying for several different funding sources and the independence to consider such funding
is increasingly important. A third factor is some growing tensions within CKO itself.
The group held considerable discussion about the proposed new legal entity and decided that
they fundamentally approved the idea of forming a new legal entity. They asked however that
the CT should prepare a draft of by-laws for a new independent legal entity in Slovakia and
send to everybody for comments and final approval. Members of RT agreed to find out the
duty of tax report in each country for this kind of international organization.
 Other items
Next RT meeting will be two months before the 2005 Conference (the middle of March).
Three groups offered to consider hosting the meeting: Hungary (Kunbabony Community
Center), Ukraine and Georgia. A final decision will be made later this fall.
Angelika suggested that we should put on our web site additional information about each
country – some kind of short annual report about country-wide NGO sector.
Ilona suggested having extra two hours during each RT meeting for exchange of information
about our organizations.
Giorgi suggested to publish a special publication of three years of CEE CN where one page of
information about each member organization would be included.
As a last issue we returned to our pro-active agenda. Several concerns were raised about how
the overall strategy including how decision will be made for other items than what were
agreed to in the draft plan. It was decided that if some organization will have some issue,
they will take initiative and ask any/all members for support. It was agreed that we need to
consider future development of the pro-active strategy but the group was generally satisfied
with the initial plan outlined on Saturday.