Belgrade Open School in assosiaction with Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), continued their work on a new component within the project ’Civil Society for European integration’ (CS4EU), that has started in 2016. A new direction for civil society to facilitate Serbia's EU accession will be through the cooperation of two sectors - civil and business.
Belgrade Open School has started a long-term cooperation with the private sector since 2013, creating a stable network of over 40 companies through a series of projects and initiatives. Thus, this activity will be continued through this project to establish and strengthen cooperation in connecting civil and business sectors. Serbia's accession to the European Union is an important step forward, and the participation and cooperation of other actors along the way is an even more important step. Representatives of the civil and business sectors will be able to clarify and understand the challenges posed by the process and what are the options for action to achieve positive change.
The idea of a new component of the project is to connect civil sector organizations with businesses sector through a set of activities between 2019 and 2021 and enable them to solve problems through joint initiatives. Belgrade Open School will actively work to connect the two sectors in order to facilitate the adaptation and understanding of Serbia's EU accession process, as well as the development framewok of sustainable development. After the conducted research on the role of the civil and business sectors in the process itself, the results indicated the space that exists for establishing and advancing joint initiatives.
Through collaboration, training, partnerships and networking, they will have the opportunity to mutually share common interests as well as to address the same problems encountered in their work. Belgrade Open School has been working for many years to strengthen the capacity of the representatives of the business sector, and through this project will further support the cooperation of these two sectors.