On June 18, 2008, in collaboration with Civic Initiatives and the Deputy Prime Minister’s Poverty Reduction Team, ECNL hosted in Belgrade a conference on the enabling institutional models of Government/CSO partnership.
The conference drew more than 60 government officials and CSO representatives and served two purposes:
- to expose participants to comparative institutional models of government/CSO partnership and comparative experience in the implementation of those models;
- to stimulate discussion as to what institutional model for government/CSO partnership would suit Serbia best.
ECNL presented the major features of comparative institutional models of Government/CSO partnership, and the policy reasons behind those models. In addition, ECNL utilized its broad network of regional partners to bring in the respective heads of the offices for cooperation with CSOs in Croatia and Montenegro, in order to share their experiences.
In the lively discussion which followed, participants cautioned against merely copying any of the presented models, given the nature of the government in Serbia and its past track-record. Some questioned whether any model of institutional collaboration in Serbia would meaningfully serve the interests of CSOs at all. Before the conference concluded, participants were unanimous in agreeing that more discussion is needed before a decision on a particular model is made. This reinforced the point ECNL repeatedly made during the conference: the process of arriving at a particular model of partnership is as important as the end result.