Women Civic Initiative - WCI Sveti Nikole

Economic and political strengthening of women
 

The Women Civic Initiative from Sveti Nikole started its work in 2001 as an informal group consisting of six women representatives of the local government, the trade union, the business sector, the media and the civic sector. The original idea, as WCI President, Mrs. Irina Pockova said, was to initiate activities in the field of economic strengthening of women.

"We operated as an informal group of citizens until 2002", says Mrs. Pockova, "because of the impossibility to have access to the funds of the potential donors we formalized the group and started the process of registration. Today, our association has 120 members and our basic activities are directed towards the economic and political strengthening of women from Sveti Nikole municipality, she added.

The profile of the Women Civic Initiative was drawn with the first implemented project. With "Ways and possibilities - alone to the personal business", 20 women were trained how to register an enterprise, how it functions, how to approach the donors, how to organize marketing and placement of the product. 10 women were trained to work on computers and a brochure called "Ways and possibilities - alone to the personal business" was published. In the implementation of the projects WCI does not limit itself to the training, but it tries to give an opportunity to the trainees to implement the knowledge into practice. Thus, after the training of 40 people for production of gardening products and greenhouse flowers, WCI in cooperation with PE "Makedonski Sumi" provided five greenhouses for a period of five years where five women would be able to actually start their business. The same thing happened with another project, when, after the publication of the guide "Container production of seedling", WCI in cooperation with the Agency for promotion of individual farming from Sveti Nikole gave 2000 containers for production of seedling to the interested.

"We can be proud of our good cooperation with the local government", says the President Pockova. "Thanks to that cooperation the WCI initiative for opening a Civic Information Centre was realized, and we hope that our initiative for opening a Centre for Women Entrepreneurship will also be successful."

The organization has good relations with the other civil society organizations. In cooperation with the Women Organization from Sveti Nikole and the Roma Association we implemented a research whose goal is to discover the reasons for the insufficient presence of women in the decision-making positions. The project called "Integration of the young people in the society" is being implemented together with the Roma Association.

In the short period of its existence, the Women Civic Initiative has implemented several other projects: Gender budgeting; Decentralization - now and today, etc. The members of the organization think that there is still a lot to do in the field of economic and political strengthening of women. Therefore, they are determined to continue in the same direction, hoping that they will have more and more associates and followers.

Contact: GIZ, Sveti Nikole, Plostad Ilinden bb, 2220 Sveti Nikole

               Telephone 032/444-322

(the office is open weekdays from 10-12)

 

Gonce Jakovleska