Consultative Workshop “How to establish successful cooperation between regional development agencies and their stakeholders?” held in Uzice

The workshop named “How to establish successful cooperation between regional development agencies and their stakeholders?” was attended by representatives of regional development agencies, local self-government units, local development agencies, civil society organizations, entrepreneurs associations and representatives of small and medium sized enterprises from Kolubara, Zlatibor and Raska district. During the workshop brief Project description, research findings on stakeholder’s perception on regional development agencies in Serbia, as well as recommendations on improving consultative mechanism between regional development agencies and stakeholders was presented. Workshop was hosted by senior consultant for environment of Regional Development Agency “Zlatibor”, Milos Radojevic, and research associates and project assistants of Belgrade Open School, Vanja Dolapcev and Slobodan Ocokoljic.

Second part of the workshop was organized as a discussion on improving regional development policy in Republic of Serbia and on improving recommended consultative model. The absences of systematic approach, ad hoc solutions, as well as absence of local self-government units’ understanding on adopting strategic documents were notice as main problems in domestic regional development policy.

Regarding recommended consultative model between regional development agencies and their stakeholders, comments and suggestions of participants were focused on efficiency of recommended model and participation of civil society organizations, experts in area of environment and public relations in recommended model. In order to avoid privileged civil society organizations, it was suggested to organize open public call for civil society organizations’ participation in recommended model.

On this occasion, Memorandum on Cooperation between Regional Development Agency “Zlatibor” and Belgrade Open School was signed. Therefore, the official future cooperation and partnership was established between these two parties in areas, such as regional development, development of local self-government units and environmental protection. During the ceremony, Regional Development Agency “Zlatibor” was represented by its Director, Slavko Lukic, and Belgrade Open School, by Centre for European Integration coordinator, Mirko Popovic.

Video clip on consultative workshop was made by Regional TV “Lav+” from Uzice and it can be watched here.

The following consultative workshop will be organized in Novi Sad, on Monday, 25^th of November 2013.