Centre for Civil Initiatives Poreč

National Network
Croatia
Address

Partizanska 2 d
52440 Poreč
Croatia

Telephone
+3852452746
E-Mail
cgiporec@cgiporec.hr
E-Mail (2)
silvia@cgiporec.hr
Organisation Type
Non-Governmental Organization
Year of Establishment
1992
Fields of Activity
  1. Democracy and community development
  2. Environment/Sustainable development
  3. Gender
  4. Human rights
  5. Youth and education
General Information
Centre for Civil Initiatives Poreč is a non-governmental, non-profit civil society organization established in 1992. Currently 4 people are employed in the organization. In the last few years, the average annual budget is about 120,000 euros. The work of the organization is financed through local, national and international grants. The Centre focuses on three programme areas: Protection and promotion of human rights, protection and promotion of women's and LGBT human rights; democratization and active citizenship. It operates in the territory of the Istrian County and in cooperation with partner organizations on national and international level. We also place special emphasis on inter-sectoral and participatory development of the local community. We are members of several national networks: Croatian Women's Network, PETRA Network, Platform 112, and we work closely with many organizations from Croatia and abroad such as the Center for Peace Studies, GONG, Cesi, Sarajevo Open Center, ...
Mission and Objectives

Mission The Center for Civic Initiatives Poreč is a human rights, feminist, peaceful and non-profit civil society organization that, respecting the principles of freedom and equality since 1992, protects and promotes human rights and active citizenship, provides direct protection, publicly advocates and lobby representatives public authorities, raising and educating citizens and citizens, supporting the work and development of civil society organizations and civic initiatives that contribute to the general good and the strengthening of civil society. The objectives: - Protection and promotion of human rights, in particular women's human rights on feminist principles - helping the development of the democratic process by promoting pluralism as the principle of a state and society organization that legitimizes citizens to freely exercise their interests; - encourage the development of local self-government, civil society organizations and the community as a framework for improving the quality of life and meeting the everyday needs and interests of citizens; - training of the organisation for quality and efficient provision of services, operation and realization of financial, professional and other necessary capacities for development of new initiatives

Main Projects / Activities

The specificity of our association is that we unite the following dimensions: human, peacekeeping, feminist and civile. In recent years, we mostly work on gender inequality and struggle against violence against women, increasing the visibility of LGBT people, reducing discrimination, working with youth on human rights, focusing on women's and LGBT human rights and women's reproductive rights. The program against violence against women formally started in 2005, although many years before that we worked actively to advocate for addressing the problems of lack of quality support for women and provide them with direct assistance. Within the program, we have established and built capacities of The safe house of Istria and have built inter-sectoral cooperation among the competent services, institutions and CSOs, and now we are focusing our activities on advocacy for creation support for re-socialization and reintegration of women after leaving violence (housing care, employment and childcare support), education of youth and the public on all types of violence against women and advocating for the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. In the program area of promotion and protection of human rights, we focus on providing free legal aid services and direct protection to citizens. CGI volunteers provide direct protection as well as free legal aid and we are the contact point of the Office of the Ombudsman. We work with users regardless of funding, because we believe that the level of human rights protection in the community / society is directly related to the most vulnerable individuals. The program area of democratization and active citizenship is aimed at strengthening the capacities of various institutional advisory bodies, with executive and representative bodies meeting the interests of civil society organizations and other civic initiatives or informal groups. This program area includes working with civil society organizations on public action training, CSOs and local self-government units through charter / advice or other forms of institutionalized co-operation, education for representatives of institutional authorities, monitoring of institutional mechanisms in the county of Istria, advocacy for good governance and participatory democracy, increased transparency, elimination of corruption and nepotism, educating citizens (with particular emphasis on young people) for taking an active role in society. We are working here independently and through the Civil Platform of Istria, which brings together civil society organizations and civil society initiatives in the field of human rights protection, democratization, the suppression of corruption and the protection of public resources, especially the environment, civil society development, child and youth care, culture and art and other areas of organized activity. A common vision is life in a county and a country where the rule of law under the principles of good governance (accountability, participation, predictability and transparency) is the basis of the work of individuals, institutions and politicians in which there is an empowered, active and responsible civil society and prevails participative political culture of responsible, solidarity and interested citizens. Within this area, the fourth year we are carrying out the project of Empowered Civil Society Organizations - CSOs and Active Citizens in the City of Poreč and through the project we want to strengthen civil society organizations for greater influence on political processes and decision-making, greater interest and public support, greater visibility and the credibility of CSOs, greater autonomy of CSOs, greater influence of the public on decision-making, continuous monitoring of the work of the institutions, increasing the transparency of the work of public institutions. When we talk about promotion and protection of women's human rights, we have set the focus in our work to combat violence against women, gender-based violence and the prevention of violence in work with youth, or violence in adolescent relationships. We work with high school students to teach them to recognize violent patterns of behavior in order to teach them how to react and what do to if they are in a violent relationship. Also, we have been doing a lot of work with them on human rights, discrimination and human rights of LGBT people. We are working to increase the visibility of LGBT people in Porec and Istria through fun-cultural events and organization of public actions. We are actively combating gender inequality and sexism, discrimination, advocating the right of women to decide themselves about their own body, we work on the advocacy capacities of the association people with disabilities, we are working on strengthening the Civil Platform of Istria, ...

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Contact (1) Full Name
Silvia Žufić Dujmović
Job Title
Coordinator
Head of the organisation
Silvia Žufić Dujmović
Contact (2) Full Name
Nataša Vajagić
Job Title (2)
Program coordinator