More information
Description
The devastating earthquake also affected the activities of CSOs. After the earthquake, CSOs were additionally engaged in helping the local population, while the organizations registered in the earthquake-affected areas themselves suffered significant damage and their work was disrupted or completely disabled when it comes to project implementation and regular activities. In order not to jeopardize sustainability, quality of work, provision of services, implementation of activities, CSOs in Sisak-Moslavina County (SMC) are forced to seek new solutions and ways of functioning in order to meet the needs of their users for which they operate.
As one of the solutions to the difficult situation of CSOs in Sisak and Petrinja, related to space and capacities, socio-cultural centers (SCC) are imposed as a successful model in creating conditions for social development and increasing the quality of life. In addition to providing space and resources to sustain activities, they enable citizens to create, consume, design, and propose content of public interest while establishing participatory governance models. In this context, they also respond to the humanitarian and social needs of the residents in the area of SMC, by enabling the implementation of regular and humanitarian activities of CSOs. It is important to strengthen existing CSO capacities and establish new ones to establish functioning SCCs. The main goal of the project is to implement the advocacy and crowdfunding campaign and online and offline events to raise public awareness, decision makers and CSOs, which is to improve the position of CSOs in the earthquake-affected area by advocating the importance of socio-cultural centers for local communities and advocacy skills of CSOs and through capacity building and networking to create new opportunities for cooperation in order to resolve the crisis situation.
The role of all partners is to advocate and work towards founding community centres in Sisak and Petrinja.
Summary of project results
As part of the project, an online conference was held where we introduced the general public to the concept of socio-cultural center and its importance for the local community. Through 2 meetings with representatives of the civil, public and private sectors and the citizens of Sisak and Petrinja, we received feedback that they realized the great importance of establishing community spaces in their community and that they are ready to support the crowdfunding campaign. 1 catalog of recommendations and examples of good practices related to the establishment of CSs was developed in order to acquaint the project team with the best solutions and practices from Croatia.
In order to better respond to the needs of the local community, we conducted a survey of their needs. 2 reports were made, one on the needs of citizens and the other on the needs of organizations.
The community space was obtained in the form of a donation of money in the amount of two containers by UNICEF as a result of great advocacy efforts.
Containers are not long-term solutions and we will go for finding more adequate and larger spaces for socio-cultural centers.
All partners learned how to organize and conduct a crowdfunding campaign. We launched the crowdfunding campaign on September 22, 2021 year and ended on October 13, 2021. A total of EUR 6,665.00 was collected through the platform, while HRK 7,646.20 and EUR 999.89 were paid directly into the account.