TIRANA, May 24/ATA/-The Western Balkans Fund Secretariat held in Tirana the two-day Partnership Workshop and Grant Awarding Ceremony of the 24 Winning Projects from the WBF Second Call.
Attending the event were senior officials from the foreign ministries of the six Western Balkan countries, representatives of the diplomatic missions, organizations of the civil society, partners and collaborators.
The Western Balkans Fund CEO Gjergj Murra said during the speech he delivered on this occasion that the 24 winning projects are rendered into more than 85 partnerships in all the region.
“The projects propose more than 85 partnerships in all the region and bringing together more than 5 thousand people from all the region. This is rendered in concrete activities of the mission and carry our political will to enhance cooperation and links among the people”, said he.
According to General Director of Strategic Political Affairs at the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs Mimoza Halimi the meeting is symbolic of the concrete work of cooperation done in the region. “The perspective of relations of good neighbourliness among the countries of the region must be an encouragement to achieve long-term stability and progress in our region as well as to accelerate our journey toward the EU”.
The Slovak ambassador to Albania Peter Spisiak highlighted in his speech the role of the Fund toward the European ambitions. “The Western Balkans region has always played a key role in shaping European security and stability. The region should take political help and assistance to projects as a support for its European ambitions. This would make a contribution to strengthening of the civil society in the region and would make easier the contacts among the people”, said the ambassador.
While Executive Director at Social Contract Institute Olta Ceta, a guest to the WBF event, considered it a great opportunity of cooperation on common regional projects. “The WBF is a great opportunity of bringing people together and removing the barriers in an effort of building bridges and connecting people with one another”.
On his part, the North Macedonia Chargé d’Affaires in Tirana Dancho Markovski said that good neighbourliness is the best example of the European values. “The strengthening and improvement of regional cooperation is a clear requirement to the Western Balkan countries on their way toward the EU”, said he.
According to Sanja Tosic (Club for Youth Empowerment) the young people carry a great potential of change and the region is investing in this direction.
“Our goal is to empower the young people on different levels, topics and methods. We as an organization strongly believe in the young people because they are the ones who can and will be a serious change in our region”.
Western Balkans Fund is an inter-governmental initiative, established by Contracting Parties of WB6 (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo*, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.) This is the first regional initiative with its headquarters in Tirana. The main aim of the projects is the promotion of the common values among citizens, Civil Society and institutions in the region, strengthening the collaboration and the contacts people-to-people in the Western Balkans.
This momentum will symbolically start the implementation phase of the Projects of the WBF Second Call, aiming to enhance regional cooperation and people to people contacts in our region. The winning projects will be part of a wider regional drive, which encompasses more than 80 partnerships from all over the region during the implementation phase of the project.
On the first day of the event, the representatives of the winning organizations from the WB6, were able to know each other, to share their experiences in projects cycle management and achieve fine-tuning with the Secretariat staff with the specific WBF requests on monitoring, reporting, timeline and financial/budgetary issues.
The Second Call was launched on November 2 last year and applications were accepted until the December 15, 2018 deadline./p.s./
