The Association of Local Democracy Agencies (ALDA) has decided to set up an annual scholarship in memory of its Honorary President, Gianfranco Martini, who passed away in October 2012.

On 29 January, ALDA held a meeting at the Committee of the Regions together with the Region of Lower Silesia (PL) and the Region of Dnipropetrovsk (UA) to discuss the opening of a Local Democracy Agency (LDA) in Ukraine.

On December 13, 2012 ALDA together with the Congress of the Council of Europe organised a hearing on Local democracy in Azerbaijan, held at the Committee of the Regions in Brussels.

M. Danny Sriskandarajah, new Secretary General of CIVICUS – The world Alliance for Citizens’ Participation – visited the office of ALDA in Brussels on the 31th of January and met the Director of ALDA, Antonella Valmorbida, and the Policy officer, Peter Sondergaard.

The international conference “Migration and politics”, first international event of the project “My EU: young, equal, inclusive”, will be held in Brescia (Italy) from 1 to 3 February 2013.

The local event VIT in Vicenza took place on the 18th and 19th of January 2013. It was, for the whole community, full and intense days on the topics of twinning and cooperation between communities and cities.

he Governing Board that took place in Vicenza (Italy) on the 17th and 18th of January 2013 was of particular importance for ALDA since it adopted the Strategic Paper 2013/2016.

On January 15, During a meeting which occurred in Belgrade at the Palace of  the Government Mr Alessandro Perelli, representing ALDA Governing Board, introduced to the Serbian Prime Minister, Mr Ivica Dadic.

The Organisations and Associations of the Italian Civil Society, joining the Italian Alliance for the European Year of Citizens 2013, met in Rome, in the “Sala Natali”, by the Permanent Delegation of the European Commission in Italy.

The training seminar „Partnership building for EU integration“ for civil society organisations and local governments, within the project “The European and Our Affairs“, was held in Zavidovici on the 12 December 2012.

On 11th November 2012 in the premises of Evangelic Theological Seminary in Osijek the Opening Conference of the project „Support for networking and twinning at European level“ was held.

The European Federal Movement of Vicenza is now hosted by the Office of Vicenza of ALDA. This cooperation is a concrete step for an intense cooperation that takes place locally between the Italian office of ALDA and the citizens’ belonging to the local section of the MFE.

At the invitation of ALDA’s main Tunisian partner, Lam Echaml , Mr Oriano Otocan and Mr Alessandro Perelli have visited Jendouba for a one-day seminar on “Regional Development, Local Democracy and the New Constitution” that took place on 1st and 2nd December 2012 in Aïn Draham and Jendouba in Western Tunisia.

ALDA, in cooperation with PLATFORMA, is organising a regional consultation for the Eastern Partnership countries and the Pre-Accession countries (Western Balkans and Turkey).

An international Conference (qui link al pdf: Agenda Conference Paris_05-12-12 ) on “Human Rights and Intercultural Dialogue in Development”, will be held in Paris on the 10th December 2012 (Federation of the Ligue de l’enseignement – 167 boulevard de la Villette, 75010), organised by ALDA in cooperation with CIDEM – Civisme et Démocratie.

The opening conference of the new project Support for networking and twinning at European level, funded by the European Union under the Cross-Border Programme Croatia-Serbia, was held in Subotica, SRB (5 December 2012) , organised jointly by the LDA-s Subotica and Osijek.

The final meeting of the PRINCE project “Civil Trust Building – Find your way through Enlargement Labyrinth” gathering all the project partners and the contact persons from the Western Balkan countries whose participation was coordinated by ALDA, was hosted by the Italian organisation ARCS.

The celebration of the eighth anniversary of the Local Democracy Agency Mostar was held in Mostar, on Wednesday 28 November.