ABOUT US

Center for civil society development PROTECTA is non-governmental organization, founded in Nis after students' protests in 1996/97. These non-party and independent protests strengthened PROTECTA founders' belief in the necessity of non-party civil initiatives that would contribute to reform processes and development of modern civil society in Serbia.

PROTECTA's mission is raising citizens’ awareness through implementation of activities in the fields of: democracy, culture, environment protection, economic empowerment of youth and work with refugees and internally displaced persons. From the very beginning, PROTECTA aimed at positive activities that might affect local community development, capacity building of the local community and local democratic processes.

We do nor regard local community development as a specific activity, but as a global approach to all kinds of activities – approach that is based on broad public participation and integration of all groups and interests in the local community.

From all possible forms of local society development, PROTECTA focused on the following two:

• Social capacity building – increasing of possibilities and people's willingness to take active participation in goals accomplishment and raising the level of mutual confidence.

• Social integration – with special focus on groups that are systematically excluded or insufficiently represented in development processes.

Local community capacity building is a process which can improve living standard in the communities through capacity building of the population, organizations and institutions, for the purposes of identification of their needs, priorities and action opportunities. Capacity building would, individually or collectively, enable and foster sustainable positive changes in the community. This process resulted from efforts to create the sense of team work in the community through exchange of information and experiences, as well as from efforts to build confidence and establish cooperation with professionals and persons with common goals and mission.