Sustainable and inclusive services at the local level

The project "Sustainable and inclusive services at the local level" is financed by the Government of Sweden and implemented by the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities - Association of Towns and Municipalities of Serbia (SCTM) with the strategic support of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR). The projected duration of the Project is three years, from July 2022 to June 2025.

The primary goal of the Project is to create conditions for towns and municipalities in Serbia to become more responsible and efficient in providing inclusive and high-quality services to all men, women, boys, and girls in the places where they live, based on the principle of gender equality, an approach based on human rights, analysis based on evidence and a focus on sustainability in the areas of environment, disaster risk reduction, gender equality, and local economic development in accordance with EU standards and revised national legislation and public policies.

Relying on the results and experiences from previous project phases (from 2011 to 2022), the Project focuses its activities on providing direct support to local self-governmens (LSGs) in four areas:

• Environment
• Local economic development - Women's entrepreneurship
• Disaster risk reduction
• Gender equality

Within those thematic areas, the Project will implement three supporting processes in order to achieve the desired results:

• Direct support to selected LSGs through the established concept of municipal support packages (MSP);
• Capacity development of a larger group of LSGs based on previous experiences, as well as new methods and tools developed through MSP;
• Development of advocacy and policies based on municipal experiences and analysis of municipal conditions and needs.

In total, the Project will implement 20 MSPs in the mentioned thematic areas, which will be designed in such a way as to integrate the principles of gender equality and human rights, as well as the preconditions arising from the process of Serbia joining the EU.

In addition to direct support to selected LSGs, the Project will work on raising the awareness and capacity of all towns and municipalities. Using the experience of working directly with local authorities through MSP, SCTM will maintain its position as a relevant partner of national institutions in the preparation of new regulations and methodologies. The results of the strategic analysis and the experience from the implementation of the MSP will be further used as a basis for the development of priority policies of the SCTM in four thematic areas. The project will use the results-based management (RBM) approach, which has proven to be an effective and efficient working method during the previous phases of the project.

Contact person: Miloš Obradović, Officer for Information and Communication (milos.obradovic@skgo.org)