Last February we welcomed six Civil Service volunteers to our team in the ALDA offices of Brussels, Skopje and Strasbourg. After four months since their arrival, Alessandro, Arianna, Elisa, Francesca, Giorgia and Virginia share their thoughts about their experience in ALDA so far.

LDA Northern Morocco organised an online debate on April 2nd on the role of citizen participation during the health crisis: if on one hand the current economic situation limits the social mobilisation of associations in the field, on the other hand it allows us to come up with new forms of civic and citizen participation.

ALDA is happy to share with all interested stakeholders the opportunity to take part in the Community of Interest of GATE.

From 25th to 27th June 2013, ALDA organised three days of activities in Strasbourg on the topic “Youth and politics”, within the project MY EUROPE and in cooperation with the Conference of INGOs of the Council of Europe (International Non Governmental Organisations).

Organised by ALDA in close co-operation with CRT Foundation and the University of Turin, the conference ‘ Crisis and renaissance – Local Community Theatre Paving the Way towards European Active Citizenship’ held on 22 May in Brussels raised awareness about the social and community theatre as a powerful tool for local communities in response to ongoing economic and social crisis.

The final conference of the Civil Society in Action for Dialogue and Partnerships project, titled “Agreement as a basis of cooperation between civil society and the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, gathered around 80 participants, NGO and LA representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina, neighbouring countries and EU Member States.

Antonella Valmorbida, Director of ALDA, took part in the Board meeting of Civicus in New York. ALDA joined Civicus – the world alliance for Citizens Participation in 2011 and in 2012, it became part of the Board.

The meeting took place at ISBEM’s headquarters in Mesagne on 27-28 March 2013 and was an important occasion to discuss the methodology and the action plan of the project whose kick-off is foreseen for April, 15 as well as all relevant details for launching the first activity.

Within the framework of the project Un-conventional constitution, led by the Directorate of Youth Policy of the Municipality of Vicenza and focused on a comparative analysis of constitutional charters, a group of 36 young Italians aged 16-30 met with ALDA’s staff of the Strasbourg office on Monday, 18 March.

ALDA, in cooperation with European Federalist Movement – Vicenza and the local organisation InsiemEuropa, organises the event “From the Treaty of Rome to the European Citizenship”, taking place at Vicenza City Hall.

In the framework of the Grundtvig In Service Training Programme of the European Commission, ALDA organised the training course for participants coming from 6 different countries working on citizen participation and local democracy.

30 representatives of the WTD Working Together for Development project, partners, coming from more than 10 different countries attended a training session organised by ALDA in the framework of the project.

To develop new educational tools and training activities to support young people’s personal and professional development needs in order to access the labour market and their develop entrepreneurship competences.

Within the ALDA Prince project “Civil Trust Building – Find Your Way through the Enlargement Labyrinth”, has been launched an internship programme in the EU.

The Albanian Association of Municipalities will organise a two-days international conference entitled “The Role of the Local Government Authorities Units in Offering Social Services – Ageing” in Tirana on 9th and 10th May 2012.

The ALDA project TIC-TAC (Training, Information, Cooperation – Towards Active Citizenship) is deeply entering in its second step with the organisation by partners of numerous local Info-days during the following month.

On 2 and 3 March 2012, RECREATURA arts&culture, organised the first workshop within the ALDA project “VIT” concerning “Volunteering in times of crisis”.

On 26 January 2012 the European Commission organised the launching conference for the European Citizens’ Initiative in Brussels. The ECI, the first participatory democracy instrument on EU level, will be in force from April 1 in all 27 member states.