Donor: WE EFFECT – Swedish Cooperative Center
This project in Bosnia and Herzegovina is part of the larger SCC Programme for Europe aimed at Poverty reduction in rural areas and empowerment of civil society organisations. The project duration is 12 months starting from February 2013 until December 2013 with possible extension to another longer project under the Programme period 2014 – 2016. The long-term development objective of this project is civil society organisations contributing to stronger democracies, fair and sustainable development as well as moving towards the EU. This development objective is consistent with overarching goal of SCC and Sida “the reduction of poverty and injustice” and the programme objective of SCC for Europe.
The core problem to be addressed by the project is that rural population in BiH and their rural organisations lack capacity and mechanisms for sustainable local community development and improvement of livelihood, equally for women and men, as well as mechanisms for influencing public policy in its harmonisation process with the EU relevant policies and standards.
The target group for this project is composed by direct beneficiaries which are more than 100 civil society organisations with more than 1,000 members (women and men) that will directly benefit from the project activities. Additionally, more than 500 civil society organisations will be indirectly targeted through this project. However, all rural population in BiH will gain some impact out of the project interventions, especially in policy improvement in relation to agriculture and rural development sector. The other main actors for this project would be the local government authorities that are in charge of agriculture and rural development and gender centres within the governments’ structures
The project objective is to strengthen capacities and build strategic networks of civil society organisations to boost equal participation of rural women and men in local economic opportunities, advocate for their interests and contribute to policy reform and harmonisation with the EU standards.The attainment of this objective will create an impact in terms of poverty and injustice reduction in rural areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Hence, this impact can only be achieved through organised civil society represented by CSOs which primary role is to build stronger democracies, fair and sustainable development aligned with the EU perspective of the country.
The project is designed around four components. The first component groups together the project interventions related to strengthening of partner organisation capacity and build capacities of participating rural organisations. The second component embraces support to rural organisations in their economic activities through provision of specific services in business and marketing. The third component targets building strong networks in rural development and creation of synergies between rural organisations in order to strengthen the voice of rural people and influence policy environment. Fourth component aimed at empowering women and women groups and increase women participation in rural development activities
B/H/S