Days of the Religious Communities
The Days of religious communities in Macedonia were organized to improve the mutual cooperation and provide relevant information to both the religious communities and the general public on their activities.

An Organizational Board was constituted from representatives of the five religious communities (the Macedonian Orthodox Church, the Islamic Religious Community, the Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church and the Jewish Community) and a representative from the MCIC. The Days of the religious communities were organized on 1-2 December 2004, in Skopje. Eighteen out of 25 registered religious communities and religious groups participated in the event. In addition, the activities of the Committee for Relations with Religious Communities as well as the civil society organisations active in this field were presented.

The Days of the Religious Communities were officially opened with speeches delivered by Dragi Kostadinovski – Archpriest deputy of the Archbishop of MOC, Jakup Selimovski – Director of the Sector for Religious Issues in the IRC, Dr. Joakim Herbut – Bishop of the Catholic Church in Macedonia, Zdravko Shami – President of the Jewish community in RM, Mihail Cekov – Superintendent of the United Methodist Church and Mr. Saso Klekovski – executive director of MCIC. This was the first event of this kind, allowing the religious communities to present themselves to the general public through exhibition and forums.

Total of 374 visitors attended the event. Separate questionnaires were prepared to evaluate the fair and the forum. Response on the questionnaire for evaluating the fair was received by 75 visitors.

To the question “Do you consider the Days of the Religious Communities to be useful and necessary?” 74 respondents gave positive answer, only 1 gave negative answer. To the question “Why did you come to visit the Days of the Religious Communities?” the most frequent answers were: to see what do the religious communities have to present and to see the offered literature. Diverse ratings were received to the question “How do you evaluate the organization of the event?”, 12 interviewees gave rating 3 (on the scale of 1-5), 20 interviewees gave 4 and 36 participants gave 5.
 

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Acronyms:
MCIC – Macedonian Centre for International Cooperation
MOC – Macedonian Orthodox Church
OTF – Orthodox Theology Faculty
IRC – Islamic Religious Community
FIS – Faculty of Islamic Science
CC – Catholic Church
UMC – United Methodist Church
JCRM – Jewish Community in the Republic of Macedonia