On 20 November, the “Civil Society Institute” NGO hosted the working meeting of the “Support for Probation” National Network created in the scope of the “Step towards Just Armenia” project implemented in the framework of the EU funded “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” Project.
Representatives of the “Civil Society Institute”, “Astghatsolk”, “Family and Community” “Children’s Association of Armenia” and “Social Justice” CSOs, as well as ALA’s Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist Narine Melkumyan and Fundraising Coordinator Eduard Manukyan, who provided the draft fundraising plan for the Network and consultancy, attended the working meeting.
During the meeting, the probation-related situation in the country, the main trends and future plans of the network’s strategy, the problems that currently exist in the probation service, the actions planned under the “Step towards Just Armenia” Project were discussed. The need to develop clear criteria for early release and the need to introduce a clear accountability mechanism in the Probation Service and the issue of the probation service was highlighted as well.
The participants of the “Support for Probation” National Network meeting considered it effective, on the assumption of the fact that during the meeting they discussed the future plans of the network as well as the implementation process of “Step towards Just Armenia” Project and the terms of the planned actions.
The “Commitment to Constructive Dialogue” project is implemented with the financial support of the European Union by a consortium of civil society organizations, which are the “Armenian Lawyers’ Association” NGO, Agora Central Europe o.p.s (an NGO from the Czech Republic), the “Armenian Center for Democratic Education-CIVITAS” NGO, the “International Center for Human Development” Public Organization, the “SME Cooperation Association” NGO and the Union of Communities of Armenia.
The overall objective of the project is to enhance the influence of CSOs and their coalitions (networks) on the public policy process. This will enable the organizations (that already work in target coalitions) to gain new resources, unite civil society experts and encourage them to participate in the formation of local and national policy agenda, identify the common problems and priorities and to apply to the government with constructive and strategic policy initiatives.
In the scope of the project, sub-grants have been provided to CSOs and CSO coalitions, aiming at public policy development and achieving tangible results in the 9 target sectors: justice, human rights, public finance management, business, education, social sector: social inclusion of children with disabilities, agriculture, economy, energy.
