Center for Intercultural Dialogue (CID) is a civil society organization from Macedonia working to promote intercultural acceptance and active citizenship through capacity building processes, education and youth work. The organization’s activity focuses on many aspects which are of interest for young people: from provision of services and information, to research and support for policy-making and networking.
CID is working to create diverse responsible and cooperative communities where citizens are actively contributing to the social development and integration. Our mission is to ensure sustainable community development by creating opportunities for quality engagement of civil society, advancing learning opportunities, and active involvement of young people and other citizens.
Target groups: CID works with young people and citizens from diverse religious, ethnic, national groups who are at the same time creators and beneficiaries of our activities. Specific activities are designed for youth workers, teachers, adult learners, as well as all stakeholders involved in inter-community dialogue and sustainable community development on local, national and international level: civil society organisations, schools, local governments, representation bodies and networks.
Main objectives
- To develop and provide quality learning opportunities within non-formal education for diverse groups of learners
- To offer capacity development of civil society to directly involve citizens in community decision-making through inclusive work-practices and networking opportunities
- To increase quality of education and learning services through encouragement of cross-sectoral cooperation, lifelong learning programmes and innovative education tools
- To facilitate youth support systems as well as participation mechanisms for young people through quality youth work and inclusive policies development
Major achievements:
- Development of a youth support system, the Youth center MultiKulti and the Local Youth Council in Kumanovo;
- Development of a "volunteering local strategy" in the municipality of Kumanovo;
- Facilitating a process of youth work recognition in Macedonia. CID established a platform called the Union of Youth Work of 30 organisations advocating for the establishment of youth support structures at different levels.
- Participation in the process of establishment of the National Youth Council.
Between 2010 and 2012, CID was one of the organisations implementing the UN Joint Programme “Enhancing inter-ethnic dialogue and communication”. As part of this project, CID established the only multi-ethnic youth centre that provides opportunities for more than 1,000 young people to participate in different educational programmes organised by the local youth workers. Within the same project CID is also working on supporting students’ activism and providing extracurricular activities on multiculturalism in a number of primary and secondary schools.
In the past years, promotion and development of non-formal education has been one of the strongest points in CID's work, which has been achieved through development of competencies of young trainers. Subsequently, those young trainers have been included in various training activities in Europe, both by delivering trainings themselves and participating in training-for-trainers activities.
