Македонски центар за меѓународна соработка - МЦМС

Overall goal of this project is development of democratic principles, preserving the national stability by reducing the interethnic tensions and promotion of positive values.

Project purpose is to raise the awareness on the human rights issues, particularly from the aspect of interethnic relations and promotion of positive values in the underlying differences between the entities.

The activities included media campaign, seminars for teachers in bilingual schools, one-day workshops, preparation of billboards and distribution of printed materials.

The media campaign included four TV videos, promoting the richness of the language, religious and cultural differences of the entities and documentary with statements from people from different gender, age, profile, ethnical background and religion on the interethnic relations and human rights in general. The videos were broadcast in a four week period from June to July 2000 on two state and six private television stations. The documentary was broadcast for two months on six private TV stations.

As part of the project, six three-day seminars were organized for 92 secondary school teachers, focused on human rights issues. The seminars were organized by the Information Centre for Civil Society (ICCS). ICCS prepared 20,000 interactive brochures for the secondary school students focused on topics such as: tolerance, nationalism, multiculturalism, etc. The brochures were distributed in 21 bilingual secondary schools on the territory of the Republic of Macedonia.

One-day workshops were held in 11 towns in Macedonia (Stip, Kumanovo, Veles, Prilep, Skopje, Delcevo, Struga, Strumica, Tetovo, Gostivar and Bitola) with the NGOs, media and local government. The workshops included interactive lectures on human rights and interethnic relations. In addition, exhibitions with children’s drawings were opened in these towns in order to promote the project.

Integral part of the campaign were the billboards with similar design as the TV videos, which were placed in 11 towns round Macedonia for a two-month period.

Additional printed and promotional materials were also prepared, such as T-shirts, pens, table and pocket calendars, which were distributed to the international and local institutions, consular offices, NGOs, media and everyone that was directly or indirectly involved in the project from June to September 2000.