Development Marketplace winners

One hundred forty four project-proposals were received and carefully reviewed by the External Evaluation Committee comprising representatives from the donor community and international organizations working with civil society programs, selecting ten winning projects.

The following organizations and their respective projects are the winners:

Gender Alliance for Development Centre – Knowledge for Empowering women – Promoting Employment and Income Opportunities for Women, Durres, Elbasan, Lezha and Vlora
This project will contribute to strengthening of the civil society with main focus on increasing the capacities of women in Durres, Elbasan, Lezha and Vlora on economic issues so that they have a higher level of understanding and acknowledgment of the legislation and the deriving rights by women of the selected areas that will lead to a stronger voice in decision making.

Albanian Media Institute – Monitoring Accessibility Index of Public Institutions, Tirana
The project will assess the level of transparency and accountability of the public administration through comparative legal analysis and empirical research. The proposed Index of government accountability will not only monitor the degree of government’s accessibility and accountability to citizens and media but it will also raise awareness on this key feature of democratic governance and fill the vacuum of information on implementation of this law by public officials.

Art-link – City of the citizens – budget of the citizens – wallet of the citizens, Durres
This project aims to strengthen the citizens’ awareness and encouragement of democratic actions such as referendum in order to ensure transparency and best use of public resources. The project will achieve this through the documentary that it will produce and by bringing to people and authorities attention the good examples and lessons learnt from the history.

Mjaft Movement – Government Public Monitoring, Tirana
The project aims at reinforcing and further developing public monitoring to a comprehensive cycle of matching initiatives. The project will monitor: Government’s ability to pass and carry out reforms, policies and programmes; The level of access to public information; Government’s openness to public participation.

European Movement Albania – Encouraging local government accountability: support to the municipality of Vlora to improve public information, Vlora
The project will tackle deficiencies in access to information and unaccountable practices in the municipality of Vlora, through support to improve the transparency of its activity and the communication links with the public.

Regional Development Agency, Korca – Security stamp of Korca business, a way to achieve a better governance and transparency at local level, Korca, Pogradec, Erseka, Maliq and Bilisht
The project aims to reduce informality in the private sector through provision of security stamps that will identify business that do not pay the taxes and educate the communities to support the ones who pay the taxes, taxes that will improve the public infrastructure.

Transparency International Albania – Budget allocation tracking system for implementing national strategy against corruption in Albania, Tirana
This project aims to evaluate the transparency and effectiveness of governmental efforts in the process of implementation of National Anti-Corruption Strategy through: Increasing understanding of anti-corruption structures and organizations on how governmental budget is processed for countering practices; Developing advocacy skills among anti-corruption structures and organizations with the government and community for increasing funds or using more efficiently the funds allocated for such activities.

Environmental Centre for protection, education and rehabilitation – EPER – Monitoring and evaluation of the policy that directly will support the agricultural development in Fier district, Fier
The project will contribute to evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of the implementation of the supportive schemes in 2007 to 2010 in Fier district. The study will not only monitor and evaluate what has already been done but will also provide recommendations on how to most efficiently do budget allocation through putting an emphasis on participatory approach of needs identification.

Association of Young Artists on Stage – The involvement of young people in fighting corruption locally, Gramsh, Berat and Malesi e Madhe
The project will actively involve young people from the three selected cities to identify corruption acts that they face in their daily life and come up with pragmatic solutions which will be creatively put together in a photo novel that visually get young people’s attention and not only.

Foundation for Economic Freedom – Provision of conditions which enable a real and effective cooperation of public in decision making, through the creation of a set of virtual platforms/programs (blogs) easily accessed and open/public, personalized but interconnected; and administered in an independent way; as a free space where civil society /stakeholders /individuals can interact between them and with the institutional players, country wide
The project aims to facilitate public dialogue among governmental institutions and the public through a set of virtual platforms.