Today, Mr. Hrachya Zakoyan, President of the “For Assistance to Community Development NGO “Irazek” met with the representatives of the Gavar CSO Incubator group within the framework of the “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project. The “For Assistance to Community Development NGO “Irazek” is a member of the Agricultural Alliance of Armenia, which is implementing the project “Participatory Policies, Sustainable Agriculture.”
The “Participatory Policies, Sustainable Agriculture” Project is implemented in the scope of the sub-grant phase of the “Commitment to Constrictive Dialogue” Project.
Today’s meeting was aimed to introduce the provisions of the project and discuss possible ways of cooperation with CSOs.
During meeting, Hrachya Zakoyan highlighted the role of constructive dialogue in both the agricultural sector and the steps taken to address issues in all sectors. In particular, he noted that often, by studying both climatic and other peculiarities of the provinces, RA Ministry of Agriculture and other bodies are elaborating and implementing programs that are mostly generalized. He also noted that they act not from the position of the critic, but from the collaborator, and attach importance to the cooperation with the state bodies as well as the CSO representatives.
CSO representatives asked questions to Hrachya Zakoyan about the project and the problems in the field of agriculture. Gayane Khachatchyan, Chairman of “Areguni” Social Development NGO, was interested in the mechanisms that can protect the interests of the villagers so that they can avoid possible losses in the harvest and during the purchase of milk? Mr. Zakoyan mentioned several ways, however once and again highlighted the cooperation.
At the end of the meeting, a preliminary agreement to participate in regional discussions within the framework of the “Participatory Policies, Sustainable Agriculture” Project was reached .
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” action is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a Consortium of civil society organizations, which are “Armenian Lawyers’ Association”, Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS, “International Center for Human Development” Public Organization, SME Cooperation Association and Union of Communities of Armenia.
The overall objective of the project is to enhance the influence of CSOs on the public policy process, and the specific objectives are to strengthen the ability of CSOs to build coalitions and focus on constructive and strategic policy engagement with local and central government partners. This will enable organizations (which already work in targeted coalitions) to acquire new resources, to join and encourage the civil society experts to engage in and encourage their participation in the formation of the local and national policies agenda; to identify common issues and priorities; and to address the government with constructive and strategic policy initiatives.
The project has a sub-granting component, under which grants will be provided to CSOs and CSOs Coalitions, which will be directed to the development of public policies and will have tangible results in 9 target areas, including justice, education and business.
The Armenian Lawyers’ Association (ALA) was established in 1995 with a mission to promote to the establishment of the rule of law, democracy and formation of the civil society in Armenia, where the people are aware of their rights and where their rights are protected. Before February 2016, ALA used to be called Armenian Young Lawyers Association.
