“Towards European Values – Persons with Disabilities as Equal Citizens” is a European project, in which the Republic Center for Support of Persons with Intellectual Disability – PORAKA participates as a partner. Leading partner in the project is the Serbian Association for Promoting Inclusion – SAPI, which together with organizations from 7 countries, amongst which PORAKA, are implementing it in the period of one year, with financial support of Europe for Citizens Programme.
The aim of the project is to contribute to full integration and civic participation of persons with disabilities with regards to EU democratic values and principles. The specific objective is to develop the model of comprehensive empowerment of persons with disabilities, with specific focus on persons with intellectual disabilities, to be able to take active role in creating inclusive democratic societies and to influence policy making processes at national and EU levels which affect their well-being. The project uses the experiences and knowledge from the field of inclusion and civic empowerment of persons with disabilities across the EU member states and EU accession countries in order to enhance democratic participation of all citizens including those who are on the margins of the society. The project opened the space for deliberation on key services and tools for equalization of opportunities for the most marginalized layers of society to participate in processes of public policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, on an equal basis with other citizens. More precisely, the project is focused on organizing educational workshops, debates and dialogs for and among persons with disabilities from 7 countries (Serbia, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina), including service providers and self-representative associations i.e. persons with disabilities, on the issues related to self-advocacy, volunteering, work integration services and social entrepreneurship. All thematic areas are tackled through exchanging the good practice examples from all partner countries, exploring the needed prerequisites and possible pathways to emulate good practices in partnering countries.
On 8th of July in Novi Sad – Serbia, the Serbian Association for promoting Inclusion – SAPI, in cooperation with the School for Primary and Secondary Education for children with disabilities “Milan Petrovik” – Novi Sad, organized the final conference of the project. There were around 100 participants from Serbia, as well as representatives of the project partner organisations.
Representatives from the Republic Center for Support of persons with Intellectual Disability – PORAKA who took part at the final conference were Vlado Krstovki – Program Assistant in PORAKA, Viktor Borizovski – defectologist in the day center – PORAKA Skopje, and Nikola Ognenovski and Benjamin Bekir – beneficiaries at the day centers – PORAKA Skopje.
The conference began with welcoming speeches and introductory speeches by the hosts: Slavica Markovik, Director of the Schools for Primary and Secondary Education of children with disabilities “Milan Petrovik” – Novi Sad, Aleksandar Petrovik, Assistant Mayor of Novi Sad and dr.Dragomir Lukik, project manager and president of SAPI.
In addition, the representatives of the partner organizations in the project presented their reports regarding the participation in the project i.e. the implemented activities after the organized trainings, learned lessons, gained experiences and knowledge.
Vlado Krstovski presented the participation of PORAKA and the main benefits from the project, focusing on the following areas:
1. Self-Advocacy, as insufficiently developed concept in Macedonia and its relation to the reforms in procedures for limiting the legal capacity of persons with intellectual disability
2. Social Entrepreneurship, as an extremely significant news, which should contribute to greater sustainability of the services for persons with disability
3. Work engagement, as e process for empowering persons with disability to gain their independence, and
4. Associating and networking in formal European networks in disability area, emphasizing the role of EASPD – European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities.
