FRIEDRICH EBERT STIFTUNG

Answering Macedonian Needs

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation was established in 1925. It bears the name of the first democratically elected German president who died in the year of establishing the foundation. In 1933 the Foundation was forbidden by the Nazis and in 1947 it was reestablished. Today, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation is active in more than 120 countries in the world.

“The activities in Macedonia, supported indirectly by the Foundation”, started in 1992, said the Macedonian office director, Mrs. Milinka Trajkovska. “The office in our country was opened in 1996”, she added.

The overall programme of the Foundation is directed towards meeting the needs of this country. “Our partners in Macedonia are the NGOs, scientific institutions, the ministries, MANU and the trade unions”, stated Mrs. Trajkovska.

The Friedrich Ebert Foundation, that is, its office in Skopje, adjusts the goals and the target groups every year, trying to follow the needs of this country. Therefore, the NGOs interested, the scientific institutions, the ministries and the trade unions are sending their suggestions for the activities that state the basic information for the activity itself, the subject, the goal and the target group by the end of November. At the office, they sum up the applications and analyze the needs. On the basis of that, they formulate the goals for the next year and with those suggestions the Office in Skopje applies at the Foundation’s headquarters.

“For the year 2002, we assessed four global goals”, said Mrs. Trajkovska.” Those are: political questions; social dimension of the economic values in Macedonia; work of the trade unions and harmonization of the ethnic and the national identity and developing a sense for belonging to one country.
The methods that the Foundation uses in its work are seminars, round-table talks, counseling, trainings, etc.

“At the seminars that we organize, we try to invite not only the relevant people from the country, but also guests from the countries in the region who have experience on the given subject, and other foreign experts who have specialized in some of the subjects. Apart from that, we try to publish the most important speeches from the seminars, so that the thesis and the possible solutions suggested at the seminar could be seen not only by the participants, but also by other people interested. “We have had 20 publications on various subjects so far”, said Mrs. Milinka Trajkovaska.

Apart from the local projects, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation participates in the implementation of regional projects that are concentrated on subjects such as employment policy, social sphere and local self-government