World Bank   The civic sector is an important cooperator of the Bank   The World Bank office in Macedonia was opened in 1995. Besides the fact the Bank works directly with the government, it carries out activities and programmes in which it involves all segments of the civic society in Macedonia. Directly with the NGO sector, the World Bank works through a special programme for small grants, the goal of which is to enable NGOs whose target group are the marginalized groups of citizens so that they can have a greater impact on the public life in the country. -The competition for applying NGO projects for this programme was announced in December 2002 and it refers to small grants, from 3 to 7 American dollars. It was announced in the mass media and it can be found on our web site (www.worldbank.org.mk), and the information was also distributed to the OSIMF and the MCIC - says Denis Boshkovski, communications assistant at the World Bank's office in Skopje. In order to realize its general goal - poverty reduction with all aspects it covers, the World Bank makes contacts and other kind of cooperation wt the NGOs and other actors on the civic society. One of them is the indirect and non-financial assistance. Presently, the World Bank office in Macedonia makes preparations about the process of creating the Three-years strategy for help to Macedonia. -This process is very important for us and we want to involve in it the civic sector in Macedonia as much as possible, that is, the non-governmental organizations, the academics, journalists and other actors from that sector. It is important that everyone takes active part in the creation of a strategy that could bring Macedonia 50 million American dollars a year. A preparation material will be made containing the global framework of this strategy and it will be distributed to as many addresses as possible. This process of accumulating opinions and suggestions regarding the strategy will last for two-three weeks - says Mr. Boshkovski. After they have gathered the opinions, they will hold seminars in several towns throughout Macedonia. On the basis of the discussions at these seminars, the World Bank office in Macedonia, in cooperation with the Government, will prepare the Strategy. That document will be sent for approval at the World Bank Board in Washington whose answer should be formulated until April - May next year. -We expect good cooperation with the civic sector - says Mr. Boshkovski. We find the past cooperation with this sector very useful for both sides and we hope to extend it considerably in future - he added.   M. Ivanova