Art and Community 2005-2010

Donor: Education Support Program, Open Society Foundation
Duration: December 2010 – September 2011

The relationship between the third and the public sectors has been undergoing fundamental changes over the last decade. The public sector has increasingly retreated from the role of direct service provider, and, through the mechanisms of competitive tendering, public-private partnership schemes and interventions has been outsourcing provision responsibilities to CSOs.

These change the nature of the responsibility of CSO interventions, and lead to a fundamental transformation of the opportunities and risks for education CSO’s. Thus, the projects of education CSOs are not only an instrument of social experimentation and innovation, but part of the general understanding of what works and why. This becomes of utmost importance when one considers the complexity linked to fostering equal educational opportunity in the context of the classroom and school. Therefore, the development of information collecting protocols and strategies by education CSOs is a necessity to foster organisational capacities to better understand the outcomes and impact of their education service interventions on beneficiary groups.

The initiative is a research strategy capacity development undertaking. It adopts the use of practice based learning and test based instrument development to develop information gathering protocols and strategies for CSOs to improve the extent to which educational interventions are validated sources of systematic social data

“Youth exploring human right in Macedonia” is six months educational and process oriented project with aim to strenghten the capacities of young people from secondary schools in the Republic of Macedonia so they can promote human rights and equality in their community and close environment, exercising in such way citizen’s rights. The project includes different workshops on human rights education, review of case study and research activities, as well as education on various media and art tool, all directed toward development of new approach for social inclusion and non-formal human-rights education based on art. We want to underline the fact about the importance of art used as a tool for social inclusion, especially in situations that are dealing with political, social and economical misbalance.

The initial inspiration for this project is the issue of media/art/culture accountability and its approach to the subject of human rights, seeing it through the eyes of the young people from Macedonia.

We hope to provide safe environment where participants can broaden their knowledge about human rights concepts as well as the use of art as a toll for social change by gaining new skills in socially active video production. This learner-oriented training program will contribute to their development of a positive self-concept, new knowledge and new practical skills for social integration and cohesion and hope to enable the youth to take active role in the transitional society, broadening their views and perspectives on alternative ways of human rights education and social intervention. We see these activities as a bridge for promotion of human rights and intercultural learning.
Involved secondary schools from Skopje:

1. SUGS “Nikola Karev”,
2. SUGS “Zef Ljush Marku”,
3. SUGS “Pance Arsovski”
4. SUGS “Marija Sklodovska-Kiri”

The project was finacially supported by the Assisting Communities Together (ACT) Project of OHCHR and UNDP, TINEX Markets from Skopje, Restaurant “BALKANIKA” and the City of Skopje and made throught the collaboration with Art Academy ESRA and Meze-bar SOPOTSKO.

Visit www.youth4rights.blog.com.mk for more info on the project.