Minutes from the Representative Team meeting
Prague, April 8 –9, 2006
Present:
Silvana Braculla – Albania, Rubina Ter-Martirosyan – Armenia, Igor Stojanovic – Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Liuba Batembergska – Bulgaria, Drago Vrucinic – Croatia, Hana Caletkova,
Roman Haken and Jiri Pavlat – Czech Republic, Helmut Hallemaa – Estonia, Giorgi
Meskhidze – Georgia, Mate Varga - Hungaria, Barbara Szczerbinska – Poland, Viatcheslav
Tcherniavsky – Republic of Belarus, Nicolae Cuta – Romania, Igor Kokarev – Russia,
Vladimir Jovanovic – Serbia, Chuck Hirt – Slovakia, Natalia Sukhodolska and Svetlana
Kuzminova – Ukraine and Anna Karailieva – Coordinator of the CEE CN
Agenda:
 Report from the Coordinating Team (CT) meeting
Barbara reported from the CT meeting in Budapest, December 2005 – everybody received
minutes from that meeting. During CT meeting a day before the RT meeting in Prague CT
voted in a new organization CNVOS – Centre for information service, co-operation and
development of NGOs from Slovenia. Concerning the membership, MAP from Croatia asked
for exclusion from the Network. Drago will check if they could send us report about the
citizens’ participation project.
 Current level of development of the CCE Citizens Network and its activities in
comparison with plans
Chuck evaluated activities of CEE CN in 2005, clarified the structure of the Network for these
who attended the RT meeting for the first time and gave the thank you letters to five member
organizations who contributed financially to some of CEE CN activities in years 2005.
 Election of new CT member
Barbara asked to finish her term in CT one year earlier because of her other obligations. She
proposed that Mate Varga would serve instead of her as a member of CT for the next year.
Everybody agreed with this suggestion. Igor S. was then re-elected for the next three years.
 Training 2006 – the team report on possible topics, date and place for the
training
Giorgi as a chairperson of the training team presented the proposal for the 2006 training.
Concerning the topic and methods the following offers have been made:
Author
Topic
Method
Anna
and
Chuck
1.Under the theme “Rebuilding
Citizenship in the New Europe” of
Training of participants
the
proposal
for
European
Commission
Nicu
2.Project cycle management - with
an emphasis on European structural Training of participants
funds for EU (future) members
Nicu
Giorgi
Slava
3.Civil society and social capital
4.Participative
regional
community planning
Training of participants
and Training of Trainers with pre and
after on-line
5.Initiation and influence of
regional development processes by
Organizational Activity Game
method
Organizational Activity Game with
pre and after on-line
After presentation of the Organizational Activity Game by Slava and discussion about the
training, RT members agreed on the topic and method nr.4. Training team will prepare the
proposal and send it to RT members.
Training team: Giorgi, Nicu, Slava, and Drago.
 Citizens Participation Week 2006 – discussion led by Mate Varga, chair person of
2006 Citizen Participation Week
Mate as a chairperson of the CPW team presented background of CPW idea and than he asked
people to talk about their experiences organizing CPW last year and also to suggest activities
for CPW in 2006.
Suggestions from RT members:
 We should organize CPW in that way that it could be recognized by different actors as
an important event
 Stabilize and make stronger activities that we have done already
 Each CEE CN member organization should do more proper introduction to our
national partners and play a stronger coordinating role within the country
 Media is a key issue for CPW, we should reach three levels of media – local, national,
international
 Insure and remind through media that Citizens Participation is important in every day
life
 To show how many activities do we do during the year
 To prepare a manual what is Citizen Participation
 Organize some joint initiative for all CEE CN members
 Propose several topics that CEE CN countries could choose under which topic they
will prepare their activities during CPW (e.g. Active European Citizenship, etc)
 Insure visibility of CPW on regional level
 To show that CEE CN is an international power in the region
Framework for 2006 CPW:
1) Date: September 23 – October 1
2) Planning Teams: International planning team = CEE CN Representative Team and
National planning teams – every representative will have planning team within the
country.
3) National plans for 2006 CPW will be ready by the middle of July and international plan
will be finished by the end of July.
4) Open national calls for everybody to join CPW in each country and International call for
joining CPW – by the end of May
5) Common press release with the background info about the CEE CN and CPW will be
ready by end of July. Each country will add its own info to it or will modify the common
press release.
6) We will use the same logo and poster as in 2005. Vlada will check how to add Slovenia to
the poster.
7) Each CEE CN member organization should make documentation of CPW activities.
8) Funding: international funds could be use only for common design and for publication
about CPW. For activities CEE CN member organizations need to look for national
funding.
Mate will send us suggestions for a common activity for CPW.
 Trans-Atlantic partnership – information about follow up of the 2005 TransAtlantic Day and recent visit by CEE CN delegation
Igor K., Chuck and Mate talked about the study visit to Los Angeles. Mate presented his
proposal how to strengthen local citizens participation by increasing use of e-technologies.
Everybody received the report from the study trip and also Mate’s proposal in advance. After
discussion members of RT supported the proposal and agreed that:
 E-technologies could be a real benefit for the Network in short and
even more so in long term
 It will increase value of the membership in the Network
 It could have a potential impact to our Pro-active agenda
E-technologies team: Nicu – chairperson, Mate, Barbara will ask Krzysztof from OWOP to
join the team and Helmut will check if somebody from Estonia would like to join the team.
 Conference 2007– information about plans for the May 2007 event. Discussion
will include possible funding of the Conference and roles that CEE CN members’
organizations could provide to make the conference work most effectively.
Helmut presented a proposal of 2007 Conference. Everybody received a hard copy of the
proposal. Helmut asked members of RT to send him comments and suggestions to the
proposal by the middle of May.
Comments that were already made:
in the proposal, use civil society actors instead of NGOs
to create subgroups within the workshops
positive examples not just general discussion about problems within workshops
groups
as a topic for workshop add topic related on responsibility of local government
and also include topic of corporate social responsibility
we might also include housing strategy issue, social capital and hold a session
about CPW
-
in terms of cooperation between NGOs and local authorities, it could be presented
national model of Civil Society infrastructure on plenary session
choose “Citizens Action, Power and Politics: how they can go together” as a topic
for the Conference
6.7 – 6.10 don’t fit to the category of sub-themes
there are several topics of workshops that could be combined e.g. best practices
and exchange of experiences could be part of inclusion of citizens into decision
making process
Conference team will finalize the proposal according the RT members comments by the end
of May.
Conference Team: Coordinating team + Vlada
 Other team leaders reports – best practice database, knowledge bank, enewsletter, comparative analysis of the legislation in our countries in terms of
Citizen Participation
 Best practice database
Anka informed that so far we have contributions from 8 member organizations. The deadline
for sending other members contributions is end of May. Anka will send the format of best
practice to all members again.
Best practice team: Anka and Rubina
 Knowledge bank
Barbara as a chairperson of the knowledge bank team explained the background idea of the
knowledge bank and clarified with the members of RT answers to the next questions:
Who will use KB?
Open for everybody
Who will be entitled to locate a deposit?
Open to all
How the KB should be managed?
By “librarian”
How to get the content to organized?
Categories of topics
Than Barbara asked all RT members to answered two questions on the separate sheets of
paper:
1. What I/my organization would like to find in KB?
2. What I/my organization is ready to deposit in the KB?
Barbara will send conclusion from the answer to all RT members after Easter.
Space for KB: temporary solution could be to have a space in our CEE CN web site until the
Open source library will start to operate.
Knowledge bank team: Barbara – chairperson, Gleb, Anka.
 E-newsletter
Igor S. expressed readiness to improve the current level of the e-newsletter. After a short
discussion we came to the following conclusion:
written information how to contribute to the e-newsletter will be sent to all CEE
CN members
content of contributions – NEWS
length of each contribution - maximum half of page A4, if the contribution will be
longer that in the e-newsletter will be posted only abstract of the article with the
hyperlink on the national web site where whole article will be available in English
(it could increase number of visitors of our national web sites)
each issue of the e-newsletter should have 3 sections:
1. NEWS from the CEE Citizens Network
-
2. NEWS from member organizations
3. NEWS about new publications, calls for proposal, interesting web sites, etc.
One theoretical article should be added to each issue
Final version of the e-newsletter will be first sent to the CEE CN office and then
distributed to CEE CN members, NGOs recommended by members, donors, etc.
a tool for subscription for e-newsletter will be developed on CEE CN web site

Comparative analysis of the legislation in our countries in terms of
Citizen Participation
Igor S. presented the CCI project that included data from four different counties (BiH, Poland,
Bulgaria and Slovakia). We will wait for result of this project and decide how we can use it as
a Network.
 Pro-active plan – how to continue and expand pro-active role
We are moving with our pro-active agenda quite well (CPW, best practice database, etc). CEE
CN members need to demonstrate more initiatives from their own work and then Network can
help as well.
 Citizen forum – proposed event hosted by CpKP
Roman presented proposal of 3rd international forum on public participation in administrative
decision-making. Everybody received the hard copy of this proposal and Roman will send
also the e-version of it + presentation about the last forum. Members of RT should contact
Roman in terms of their interest to attend the Forum by the end of May. Each participant
should fundraise for her/his travel and accommodation.
 Formal decision about CEE CN participatory status with the Council of Europe
Members of RT agreed to apply for the participatory status with the Council of Europe.
 Suggestions of joint partnership projects for Network members
Members of RT discussed three suggestions of joint projects:
A.
International Annual Award for best achievements in civil initiatives
Igor K. agreed to work on it and develop the first concept of the Award. (As he already sent it
to us, it is included to the minutes.)
Concept of the Annual CEE CN Award from Igor K:
The Annual CEE CN Award is aimed at several goals:
1/ To promote civil initiatives in the countries of CEE;
2/ articulate criteria of social capital;
3/ To attract attention of mass media and give them these criteria for
dissemination;
4/ To gain new status for CEE CN.
There might be four nominations for this Award:
1/ Best NGO leader
2/ Best NGO project
3/ Best NGO
4/ Best volunteer
All CEE CN members are invited to send the applications for their
candidates to the Organizing Committee with their arguments in support at
least three months before the event.
The Jury selected each year of the most prominent public figures makes its
decision within a week of the exhibition that opens to the public all
nominated candidate and their projects.
The Task Force Group were to develop the standard questionnaire with
official criteria and develop the rules or guidelines for this Award and create the
starting criteria for these four nominations.
B
Producing and making anthology of documentary or fiction films based on
success story in grassroots initiatives - one story from each CEE CN member
(professionally good for television and video distribution, for schools and
NGOs)
The suggestion was to start making film documentary of our work that we can collect very
useful information in a very attractive way. The open source library could be a good place to
store this documentary from 17 CEE countries. In 20 years it will be very attractive material.
If we agree on this, then every meeting of RT could start with 20 minutes video presentation
from CEE CN members’ countries.
We need to answer two important questions:
1. How to collect institutional memory
2. How to use media and e-technologies that our documentary will be presented in wider
community
We could start our 2007 Conference with 10 minutes movie about CEE CN or at least
organize slide show to present CEE CN activities.
C
The community development educational course for schools based on basic
knowledge and skills in direct democracy citizen initiatives on community
level.
The idea was to develop curriculum for optional subject in the schools. A number of member
organizations have already been active in this effort.
Working team: Mate, Liuba, Nicu, Igor K. + Vlada will check with Natasha from CI Serbia if
she would like cooperate on this issue.
Before creating and approving the 2006 work plan there was discussion about extension of
our Network about our friends from USA and Western Europe. The suggestion was that we
should talk with them about it because it should be mutual agreement. Also it could be
different agreement with different people. We could add to our internal rules very general
partnership statement for people who want to cooperate in some level but not to be members
of CEE CN. We could also add subscription for this status on our web site. It was agreed that
Anka and Chuck would propose a strategy for moving this forward at the next meeting.
 Creating and approving the 2006 work plan
Publish best practices
E-newsletter
end of August
middle of September
Citizens Participation Week
September 23 – October 1
Training for Trainers
October 19 -22
Citizens Forum
December
E-technology initiative
Comparative analysis of the legislation in 4 our countries in terms of Citizen Participation –
pilot project
Knowledge bank
To move ahead with three different joint projects