PO BOX 60280, 8101 PA
Paphos
Cyprus
- Youth and education
Classical Greece defined symposium as the meal where rich and poor alike, came together and conversed over food and wine, about their community’s shared concerns. Symposium is a not-for-profit company, largely staffed by a female board of directors, whom have been long involved in charity and community work, elected for limited terms and with voting rights. Supported by three permanently staffed employees; an operations manager, a project manger and writer, and an administrative worker, as well as a dedicated team of local fundraisers and volunteers whom are charged with the day-to-day operations. Symposium’s present-day work in rural Cyprus, long neglected by the majority of Nicosia based non-profits, focuses on progressive community development and stakeholder empowerment. Symposium’s rural efforts complement with the EURO-MED agenda for local and regional democratic development of the ALF network partners.
Mission: Empowerment of marginalized stakeholders, the silent majority including men, women, children, elderly and migrant workers. Enhancing stakeholder engagement and education in the rural community that enhance grass roots democracy and socio-economic empowerment, in rural society, whilst concurrently supporting sustainable political and institutional development and enhancing the cultural perception of marginalized stakeholders. Objectives: (1). Improving rural marginalized stakeholder’s cultural perception, that enhances both their own, and that of the wider community’s political and socio-economic status. Promoting democratic institutional development and publishing social scientific research about stakeholder empowerment; (2). Generating socio-cultural awareness by sensitizing policymakers, public institutions and the public majority of marginalized stakeholder issues so as to enhance grass roots democracy and community decision making; (3). Providing stakeholder engagement and education that enhances their democratic, human rights and legally awareness, by enhancing marginalized stakeholder’s knowhow and voice in community participation and fairer public institutional decision-making.
AIDS / HIV Trainer Seminars and Community Awareness Raising 45 men and women educators and NGO trainers were trained to give HIV/AIDS education to vulnerable stakeholders. By raising gender health awareness about the threat of STD and reproductive health. The seminars raised issues of inadequate public health awareness education in schools, and how that could be rectified through informal ‘community’ discussions with teenagers and parents. Migrant Worker Seminars and Workshops An empowerment project/informational forum teaching marginalized stakeholders about their human rights, democracy and how to better legally organize themselves against public institutional human rights abuses. The seminars trained European Union and Third Country National migrant workers about their immigration issues, law, human rights and employment rights. Ending with interactive problem solving workshops to put their experiences to paper.
Symposium offers the ALF network in Cyprus and its Euro-Mediterranean partners a human understanding of marginalized rural stakeholder’s grass-roots challenges in democratic empowerment and community decision making, be they socio-economic developmental, legal, gender empowerment and environmental challenges that marginalized stakeholders continually face. Symposium, as the Cyprus ALF network, champions marginalized rural stakeholders, helping build sustainable democratic, inclusive and sustainable community institutions that meet their needs. By raising awareness of these problems, Cypriot NGOs, within the ALF network can lobby in the media to encourage politic debates for stakeholder inclusiveness. Cypriot NGOs within the ALF network are likely to play a crucial role in encouraging public institutional catharsis to support marginalized stakeholder’s community involvement and political empowerment
Unlike the majority of Cypriot urban NGO’s, we support the neglected rural stakeholders whom we believe have an important societal role in the cultural, political and socio-economic fabric of a democratic and unified Cyprus. The ALF network provides the accumulated expertise and partnerships to enhance socio-cultural engagement and quality of service provision to rural stakeholders through grass roots democracy and stakeholder empowerment initiatives, which remain woefully weak in Cyprus. By joining the ALF Network, Symposium works towards enhancing grass roots democracy for traditionally marginalized rural stakeholders who have had little community ‘voice’ and decisional political power. The ALF Network NGOs partnership enables Symposium’s socio-political transformational enhancement of traditional rural and women stakeholder’s community decisional power, helping them build grass roots democratic accountability within uniquely Cypriot democratic and political institutions, that support sustainable and objective policy development by local stakeholders.