Goal
The goal of the project is to raise awareness in Belgium, Romania and Bulgaria on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) process and on EU and national policies on social and active inclusion.
Partners
- Belgium: Think Tank "Pour la Solidarité", King Baudouin Foundation, The Service for the Fight against Poverty, Insecurity and Social Exclusion, The National Labour Council, DIESIS
- Romania: The PACT Foundation, CeRe, CRONO (Resource Centre for Nongovernmental Organizations from Oltenia)
- Bulgaria: The Labour Confederation "Podkrepa", The Confederation of Employers and Industrialists of Bulgaria (CEIBG), National Union of Workers and Producer Cooperatives (NUWPC)
Main Activities
The project consists of 3 different national campaigns in the above mentioned EU member states and lasts 24 months, until December 2010.
In Romania the campaign will consist of:
- research about the way the Romanian government takes part in the OMC process (objectives & indicators setting, design of policy measures and National Action Plans -NAPs) and monitoring of the NAPs implementation;
- publication of the research on OMC in Romania;
- training of 15 Romanian NGOs on the OMC and relevant OMC policies;
- creation of a NGOs network to work with the Romanian institutions on the OMC policies;
- open letter to the Romanian government from the "OMC NGOs network";
- creation of a joint group on the OMC of NGOs and responsible public officials;
- information sessions with journalists, students and academia on the OMC and adjacent policies;
- citizens' consultations on OMC policies;
- good practices for the creation of National Action Plans in a participatory way;
- participation in trans-national meetings and the final European conference on OMC.
The Current Stage
The kick-off meeting of the project took place in Brussels on the 28th of January 2009. The partners from Belgium, Romania and Bulgaria met and discussed about the implementation of the 3 campaigns in their countries. Think Tank "Pour la Solidarité" also shared with the partners lessons learned from a previous national campaign on OMC and social inclusion policies. In Romania, the PACT Foundation is preparing the national kick-off meeting.
The project "Raising Awareness Campaign on Social Inclusion and Social Protection in Belgium, Romania and Bulgaria in support of the Reinforcement of the Open Method of Coordination" is funded by the European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities.
