January 2009

On the last year in 2008 LDA Subotica team visited seven neighborhood community centre’s: Zeljeznicko naselje, Mali Bajmok, Novo Naselje, Gat, Prozivka, Centar 3 and Mala Bosna to bring them a Handbook for local elected and appointed councillors as a result of common project Local partnership for tolerance, supported by European Commission, program: European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights. Project with aim to prevent and give solution the conflicts in local communities, to promote tolerance and respect differences, abetment of international dialog of the participants of national minorities about international relationships and respects of rights of national communities, resulted with Local partnerships for intercultural understanding and tolerance Handbook for local elected and appointed councillors on English and Serbian-Hungarian language.

This Handbok has been developed as an integral component of the project Local Partnerships for Tolerance implemented in Subotica between June 2007 and June 2008. Capacity building component of this project was intended for elected members and volunteers of the neghbourhood community centres and local civil society organisations.

Comprehensive training programme consisted of training for trainers and a series of thematic trainings and workshops held in the selected six (out of 36) neighbourhood community centres in Subotica.

The main thematic areas selected are closely related with the role of the neighbourhood communities in the system of local government as the tier of government closest to the citizens on one side, while on the other, the thematic frame was to a great extent determined by some of the main findings of the research conducted during initial stage of the project implementation. Intercultural tolerance and understanding through increased citizen participation in decision making served as a general frame for defining some practical and most appropriate approaches to conflict management and resolution skills offered to the participants in the project. These were thought to be easily embraced and applied by the members of elected bodies and the volunteers engaged in the neighbourhood community centres. Therefore the entire training component of this project, composed of the training for trainers seminar, trainings in the neighbourhood community centres and thematic workshops focused on awareness raising, knowledge share and seeking most adequate tools and mechanisms for improving the democratic participation at local level.

Handbook Local partnership for tolerance for download can be found here.