The photo exhibition “Natura 2000 in frame” with pictures of protected species in Serbia is open on the Sava Promenade at the Kalemegdan Fortress in Belgrade. Art lovers who may visit the exhibition will have an opportunity to enjoy three winning and 31 semifinalist photos that competed in the “Natura 2000 in the Frame” competition.
The purpose of the exhibition aims to promote biodiversity and beautiful landscapes in Serbia and raise public awareness of the importance of nature conservation, diversity of flora and fauna.
Photo contest ”Natura 2000 in the frame” is organised by the EU-funded “EU for Natura 2000 in Serbia” project. Out of more than 1,500 received photographs, 34 were selected and will be displayed at anoutdoor photo exhibition at Kalemegdan Fortress during March and April 2021.
Meet Donika, a visual artist from Tirana who is preserving the memory of an old house and its defiant owner who refused to give in to the relentless tide of urban development.
Myslym Shyri is one of the busiest streets in Tirana, the capital of Albania. For decades, it was a quiet, residential neighbourhood with no shops or coffee bars. This changed after the fall of communism in the 1990s, when almost all houses and apartments turned their ground floors into commercial ventures. All except one.
This is an apartment building like many others, but on this ground floor, no shop or café has taken over. Many people pass by every day, and one of the commuters who passed the building regularly was Donika Çina, a visual artist living in Tirana. She was inspired to incorporate the apartment into her performance art.
“There were and are so many rumours about Bia: her life, her intentions and her mental state. Her decision to never sell or rent her home for commercial purposes seems significant.”
The memory lives on
Donika was particularly interested by an old lady, the owner, who regularly cleaned and painted the exterior of her ground floor flat. The lady’s name was Bia. “There were and are so many rumours about Bia: her life, her intentions and her mental state. Her decision to never sell or rent her home for commercial purposes, as many others have done on Myslym Shyri Street, seemed significant,” Donika says.
In 2017, when Donika started work on her performance, she found out that Bia had passed away. The house was still there, but she was not sure for how long it would remain. “I needed to take action,” she says, “to keep the memory alive, before the house was turned into another coffee shop.”
As part of her performance, Donika repeated Bia’s daily cleaning rituals in front of the house. The performance was recorded by three security cameras and live-streamed on a monitor at the Zeta gallery exhibition space in Tirana.
Her performance aimed to reflect on questions related to Bia’s daily ritual of cleaning in front of the house: was Bia fighting the city’s perceived neglect as an act of protest? Did she consider the space in front of her house to be an extension of her private space? “We cannot ask her these questions. But we can continue questioning our involvement in public space; the meaning of our conscious actions; the impact on us of our walls, concrete and trees all being whitewashed,” says Donika.
“The performance will preserve the cultural memory of the city and Bia’s gesture as a fragile but significant individual protest.”
About the project
These residencies are conceived within the long-term project, Beyond Matter, which is an international, collaborative, practice-based research project that takes cultural heritage and culture to the verge of virtual reality. One of the goals of the project is to develop novel solutions for the accessible digital documentation and networked presentation of exhibitions that currently exist, or previously existed, in physical space – including artworks, artifacts, and educational materials. The project is supported through the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
Standing her ground
The exterior of Bia’s house is still intact, even now, five years after she passed away. However, it needs some additional work in order to look as it did when Bia was alive. Recently, Donika took the initiative to build on her artistic project, by working on the exterior of the flat, and video recording the exterior in 3D, before the flat is turned into a business, like other ground floor flats in the neighbourhood.
For the follow-up work on her project, Donika applied for support from an EU-funded artist residency in Tirana. “The performance will preserve the cultural memory of the city and Bia’s gesture as a fragile but significant individual protest,” says Donika.
The call for residency was launched by Tirana Art Lab – Center for Contemporary Art, Tallinn Art Hall and the ZKM I Centre for Art and Media, inviting European art practitioners or theoreticians to apply for one of the three production residencies taking place in Karlsruhe, Tallinn, and Tirana.
Tech Boost is a regional initiative driven by the Entrepreneurship Academy of the European Fund for Southeast Europe (EFSE) to support Western Balkan startups in tech. The initiative concluded the second cycle of its programme in March 2021. During the cycle, the programme sent participants to high-profile international competitions, where two women-led technology startups were awarded a prize.
Tech Boost aims to tap the Western Balkan region’s innovative potential by connecting startup accelerators from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia onto one platform. By connecting organisations from these countries, Tech Boost endeavours to build their capacities to develop local entrepreneurs. Conceived and funded by the EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy, the initiative is being implemented together with Europe’s leading B2B accelerator, Startup Wise Guys.
The European Fund for Southeast Europe is a public-private partnership that is supported with funds from various private investors and donor agencies, including the European governments and the European Union.
The European Commission and UN Women, joined by over 60 representatives from governments and civil society organisations, launched today a new component within the EU-funded UN Women regional programme “Ending violence against women in the Western Balkans and Turkey: Implementing Norms, Changing Minds”. The purpose of the programme is to accelerate and strengthen the response to the surge in violence against women and girls amidst the pandemic in the Western Balkans.
The additional funding to Phase II of the programme, which kicked off in March 2020, will address the gaps exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in the area of general and specialist service provision for women and girls, such as shelters, legal aid and psychological counselling, as well as improving the effectiveness of support services in crisis situations.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak, the European Union and UN Women have collaborated with women’s rights organisations across the Western Balkans and Turkey and have kicked off 40 new partnerships to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of specialist services for women survivors of violence.
Elite Travel Group, in association with Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) Triple P – Tourism Development and Promotion Project – have initiated a series of free webinars for travel agents and tourism boards from the Western Balkans to help the tourism industry prepare and adapt to new market realities.
The first webinar brought together participants from all over Western Balkans, and provided detailed information and training on trends and developments, niche market segments and developing the right products, as well as on issues around sustainability and health and safety in the post-Covid era.
The Triple P Tourism Project is funded by the European Union.
Schools in Serbia transition to digital education with the support of the European Investment Bank
Coronavirus school and university closures have affected more than 90% of the global student population in 194 countries.
Governments have had to react quickly and set up remote learning, with many adopting online learning programmes. The crisis has thus exposed the digital divide both between and within countries as well as the global need for digital transformation of education infrastructure.The European Investment Bank (EIB) readily supported Serbia with this, and the Bank’s help means that all schools in Serbia will be digital by the end of 2021.
“A better digital infrastructure improves the school’s efficiency in case of emergencies.”
A project that meets the need on time
When Serbia went into lockdown in March 2020, lessons moved from classrooms to television sets. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development began broadcasting educational content for elementary and high school students on Serbia’s national public television channels.
Like many other countries, Serbia had to think on its feet and adapt to the “new normal” by producing specialised content for multiple grades. However, Serbia had been preparing their digital education content for the last few years as the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development started implementation of their Connected Schools project in 2019, with a total estimated cost of €111 million. Before this project, there were 2,000 digitally equipped classroom across Serbia but in 2019 the number rose to over 10,000. According to Eurostat, the level of individual digital skills in Serbia increased from 32% in 2015 to 46% in 2019.
“By the end of next year, more than 1,800 larger schools will be fully covered with high-speed wireless Internet access.”
About the EIB
The European Investment Bank is the lending arm of the European Union. The EIB is the biggest multilateral financial institution in the world and one of the largest providers of climate finance, investing in a sustainable future for all.
In November last year, the EIB agreed to back this project with a €65 million loan. The project is now modernising primary and secondary schools in Serbia with new digital equipment and connectivity. The EIB investment will thus support Serbia’s national education strategy and contribute to economic and productivity growth, youth employability and the development of the country’s capacity for innovation.
“The COVID-19 pandemic and social restrictions imposed caused severe disruption in educational systems and processes. These unprecedented circumstances showed that better digital infrastructure improves the school’s efficiency in case of emergencies,” says Isabelle Stoffel, the senior EIB loan officer who worked on the deal.
Milan Dobrijević heads the digital agenda department within the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications of Serbia and has been working on the project since its inception. “By the end of next year, more than 1,800 larger schools will be fully covered with high-speed wireless internet access, while the remaining remote ones will be connected using mobile broadband units,” he says.
Besides the digital infrastructure, the project is investing in nation-wide teacher training. In total, around 50,000 teachers from all over the country will improve their digital skills through this training. Starting from this school year, computer science will also become compulsory for first graders, while programming will be introduced in the third grade.
More responsible tax-payers and more transparent local institutions. The Center for Economic Analyses (CEA), through a project supported by the EU, has tried to identify ways to achieve this double goal by changing the way the two parties communicate. The initial results are encouraging.
A project carried out in 2020 by the Skopje-based Center for Economic Analyses (CEA), with the help of the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), has shown that citizens are keener on paying local taxes if their municipalities, instead of only sending reminders or warnings, approach them with messages that also call on their sense of personal values and social responsibility.
The project was implemented in – and with support from – three municipalities in North Macedonia. It included a social media campaign about tax responsibility, and also revealed another interesting detail: female tax-payers react more to reminders based on an appeal to values and males to the ‘classic’ reminders.
The EU and its member states continue to support Serbia’s fight against coronavirus. A new batch of supplies from Germany included 43,000 litres of hand disinfectant and 970 litres of surface disinfectant. This German donation comes to Serbia through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for covering the needs of the staff of the Ministry of Interior of Serbia.
Serbia is a full member of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. As such, it has a right to benefit from direct support upon request. Just last week, Serbia received a donation of 600,000 high-quality masks and 650,000 pairs of gloves through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and its RescEU tool.
The European Union is by far the largest investor, the first trading partner and the largest donor to Serbia. With more than three billion euros in non-refundable aid to Serbia provided over the past two decades, the EU is supporting Serbia to become more prosperous, more sustainable, fairer, safer and more democratic, and thus ready to join the Union.
The awarded projects are on media literacy and youth entrepreneurship and will be implemented by Ekvalis and YES Foundation, civil society organisations from North Macedonia. The project implemented by Ekvalis will promote media literacy among youth in the region by focusing on critical thinking and leading positive regional narratives. The YES Foundation project will connect youth by enhancing their leadership and entrepreneurial skills, helping them explore new opportunities and ideas that can be innovative in tackling the COVID-19 crisis.
The projects are funded under the 4th Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO) Open Call for Project Proposals supported by the European Union.
The overall objective of the fourth RYCO Open Call for Project Proposals is to support the civil society in the Western Balkans to foster reconciliation and regional youth cooperation during and post COVID-19 crisis. The call aims to contribute to increasing the capacities of CSOs that can implement regional youth-related projects and provide new opportunities for young people.
The Regional Youth Cooperation Office (RYCO) is an independently functioning institutional mechanism, founded by Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia, aiming to promote the spirit of reconciliation and cooperation between the youth in the region through youth exchange programs. RYCO is financed by the governments of the region, and it is supported by the EU and other donors.
In February, the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) and its Triple P Tourism Project launched the 1st regional FUTOURISMO competition, seeking innovative digital solutions that will help mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the heavily affected sector of tourism.
In response to this call, over eighty teams from all over the Western Balkans submitted their digital solutions proposals. A jury of tourism and technology professionals selected the six best proposals which were awarded a prize of €15,000 each for implementation of their ideas.
The Triple P Tourism Project is funded by the European Union.
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