Information on our project activities
Association “People’s Parliament” implemented from 15th to 21st February 2010, an international training called “Cross-border cooperation on youth entrepreneurship development and promotion”.
This training was organized within “Youth in Action” Programme and gathered 36 participants, youth workers, from 6 countries: Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania.
Cross-border cooperation on youth entrepreneurship development and promotion is international training which will gather youth workers active in the field of youth self-employment. This 5-day training (excluding travel days) is going to be organized in Novi Sad, Serbia, from 15th – 21st January 2010.
We are going to organize this training because we feel that one of positive solutions to youth unemployment problem is entrepreneurship education of youngsters and that self-employment needs to be more seriously considered by youngsters, as well as those providing youth with services in area of self-employment support, as viable income-generation option and as an alternative to job seeking.
If you are from Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Hungary or Romania, and are a project manager actively and directly involved in youth self-employment projects at local, national, regional and/or international level, you can apply for this training by the 25th of January 2010.
Here is the official Call for participants and Application form.
THE APPLICATIONS PROCESS IS CLOSED!
People’s Parliament began implementation of a national project “People’s initiative”, in cooperation with several NGO’s from Belgrade, Pozega, Novi Sad and Negotin.
We started this legislative project due to restrictiveness of the actual Law on referendum and people’s initiative and related regulations, as well as parts of the Law on local self-governance who deal with local people’s initiatives.
Above mentioned laws currently restrict democratic rights of citizens of Serbia to propose legislative solutions to legislators through so called “people’s initiatives”. Evaluating parts of concerned legislations which deal with the length of the signature’s collection process from citizens supporting a people’s initiative, as well as a required number of signatures that need to be collected, we came to the conclusion that current legislative acts are too restrictive, especially when compared to similar laws in numerous European countries. In reality this laws currently make it harder for citizen’s to participate in legislative roles.
Because of the above mentioned, and some other reasons, we plan to develop and propose to legislators amendments to the Law on referendum and people’s initiative, amendments to the Law on local self-governance (especially Article 68.) and various sub-legislative acts that regulate people’s initiatives. This will be done during 10 months period, until middle of 2010. Also, we plan to organize a public campaign that will introduce the project to a wider auditorium and give it a chance to participate in it.
More information on this project and activities organized are available at www.narodnainicijativa.rs.
During September 2009 we’ve organized a training in Vlasina Lake in Serbia, called “Advancing tolerance among youth from South Serbia”. This training gathered 25 youth of different nationalities from South Serbia.
Couple of photos from this training can be seen on our main page and all can be seen on our Flickr photostream.
The project is supported by European Youth Foundation.
On July the 5th this year, it will be exactly 10 years from the beginning of civic protests in Leskovac.
These protests continuously lasted for 44 days and gathered many thousands of citizens of Leskovac and surrounding areas. The civic protests practically represented the beginning of the existence of People’s Parliament, the organization that shortly after the end of the protests, articulated voice of citizens that was expressed during these civic protests.
More on these civic protests can be learned on our Internet presentation
For the fifth time European Youth Foundation decided to support our work.
On this ocassion, through “Advancing tolerance and peace among young people in southern Serbia” project, People’s Parliament will work on human rights education of young people from southern Serbia, as well as building of tolerance and understanding between young people of different ethnic backgrounds.
Due to interest expressed by the general public and a need for more effective implementation of the Law on free access to information of public importance, Call center of the Coalition for free access to information continues to operate.
Citizens dialing the number of the Call center, 0700 400 700, will be able to obtain information and assistance in order to fulfill their rights concerning free access to information of public importance. Working hours are Monday to Friday, 10 Am to 16 PM.
Running costs of the Call center will be, for the time being, handled by organization providing Call center services to citizens, People’s Parliament and Committee for human rights from Belgrade.
Implementing our youth entrepreneurship development program in South Serbia, so far we’ve organized more than 130 half-day trainings and business informatics courses for potential and existing young entrepreneurs, visited by more than 600 young people. Besides these young people, dozens of other young people participated in other activities we organized, such as different study tours and other programs that offered young people to spend some time with managers of succesful local enteprises and learn even more on entrepreneurship. More importantly, through securing constant free-off-charge consultative services to our users, we’ve initiated and helped start-up of 12 new businesses.
During Thursday, March 19, we’ve presented to the Culture and information Committee of the National Parliament of the Republic of Serbia, one of two laws we’ve submitted to the Parliament and for which we collected signatures from more than 36 000 citizens of Serbia. The Law on amendments of the Law on free access to information of public importance.
Mr. Ivan Grujic (presedent of the initiative committee), Mr. Rodoljub Sabic (Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection), Mr. Sasa Gajin (CUPS) and Mr. Dejan Milenkovic (YUCOM), spoke to members of the Committee during this presentation.
Тhe Law on amendments of the Law on free access to information of public importance was back in 2007 submitted to the National Parliament by the Coalition for free access to information. The project was managed by People’s Parliament.
In premises of the Center for youth entrepreneurship in Leskovac and Vlasotince, certificates of attendance were given to last users of trainings on youth entrepreneurship which brings number of users of our youth entrepreneurship program up to more than 500.
Each of the users who was given a certificate went through a series of 4 trainings on topics: Business plans development, Opportunities for business start-up crediting, Tax and financial administration, and Marketing of own products (services).
Photos below show moments from these events in Leskovac and Vlasotince.
B92 News in EnglishThe September country report by the world’s biggest rating agency, Dun & Bradstreet, keeps Serbia’s risk indicator at DB4d.
This places Serbia among countries with a moderate business risk.
French General Philippe Morion has been "thrown out" of the Potočari Memorial Center by the mothers of the Bosniak victims of Srebrenica.
They believe that he was responsible for not preventing genocide, said reports.
The Novi Sad-Belgrade highway will be closed for traffic from 09:00-10:00, and 12:00-13:00 CET every day September 6-9.
The Putevi Srbije (Roads of Serbia) public enterprise said in a statement today that the disruptions will come due to construction works currently under way on the Beška bridge over the Danube.
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader Čedomir Jovanović says any kind of compromise with the EU over the resolution on Kosovo would be good.
He also expressed expectation that it will be reached.
Technical meetings on the legality of expulsions of Roma from from France to Romania and Bulgaria are taking place in Brussels.
Freedom of movement for EU citizens is under scrutiny. Paris has said its deportation of nearly 9,000 Roma from illegal camps in France so far this year respects EU rules.
The International Press Institute (IPI) expressed grave concern for the state of media freedom in Ukraine, its associate SEEMO has announced.
The reaction came after a court ruling forced one TV station off the air and limited the licenses of another.
Serbian FM Vuk Jeremić has secured the support of Namibia in what media describe as the "battle for every UN General Assembly vote".
This activity comes ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting on September 9, when Serbia's draft Kosovo resolution is expected to be discussed.
The Anti-Corruption Council has made public a list of persons facing criminal charges related to the privatization of the Port of Belgrade company.
The criminal complaint was filed three months ago against 17 persons for abusing their official position during the 2005 privatization.
Spanish Ambassador Inigo de Palacio Espana opened on Thursday at the Museum of Yugoslav History an exhibition of Salvador Dali's graphic works.
The diplomat said at the ceremony that Dali was a Renaissance man, a versatile artist widely known as eccentric, who was loved and recognized, but also renounced, a genius who exerted an enormous influence on world culture.
Serbian Deputy PM and Interior Minister Ivica Dačić signed an agreement on establishing of the International Anti-Corruption Agency (IACA) in Vienna.
Dačić underlined that it was very important that Serbia is one of the signatories of the IACA establishment agreement.
Police in the town of Novi Pazar have arrested a man identified as Elvedin T., suspected of assaulting an elementary school principal.
The suspect, who will face charges of attacking an official person while they were performing their duties, has been described as a member of the "first ring of security" for Islamic Community in Serbia leader Mufti Muamer Zukorlić.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that nearly all of the American surge forces have arrived in Afghanistan, VOA reports.
They will press the new strategy President Barack Obama announced in December.
Serbian police (MUP) have seized more than 24 kilograms of synthetic drugs at the Gradina border crossing with Bulgaria.
MUP said that this meant that another smuggling route from Western Europe toward the Middle East was broken.
UNMIK chief Lamberto Zannier believes that talks should start between Belgrade and Priština.
The UN mission in the province head also said he believed it was "of lesser importance" what those talks would discuss.
Slovakia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikulas Dzurinda said on Thursday that he had never said Slovakia would never recognize Kosovo.
Slovakia has always made it clear that it takes very seriously into account the interest and stand of Serbia, he said.