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2010 Archives

30-10-2010.
BCIF on the Annual GEF Meeting

On the annual Grantmakers East Forum (GEF) meeting, which was held on October, 26th-27th in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Balkan Community Initiatives Fund was represented by Miodrag Shrestha, Executive Director, and Tanja Bjelanović, Program Director. GEF is the organization which gathers around donors who work in Central and Eastern Europe.

Miodrag Shrestha participated in the introductory conference panel on the topic “Extremes, the rise of extremism and the role of foundations.”  Apart from him, panel participants were Nigar Göksel, Senior Analyst for Turkey, European Stability Initiative (ESI), Kakha Bendukidze, businessman and politician, and Shorena Shaverdashvili, Editor of Liberali magazine.  Within the panel Shrestha pointed out the social conditions where extremism may take place, and which are universal for many societies: “Namely, if you have a war or you are surrounded by war, the rise of criminal activities, a great corruption, disrupted values in the society, furthermore poverty, unemployment, poor educational system, a number of marginalized groups, nonexistent political  or social consensus on a single question, almost permanent (potential) destabilization of the society through unresolved conflicts which may always stir up, then it is no surprise that you also have the extremist groups which offer the so-called easy ways out of that situation, and which mark certain enemies as the cause of that condition.”  They could be Roma people, refugees, immigrants, LGBT population, or any other, in most cases members of a marginalized group.  Unfortunately, wars, poverty and derangement of the value framework may happen overnight, while maintaining and building up of peace, stability and (new) value framework may take decades.”

When the role of foundations is in question, Miodrag Shrestha stressed out that Balkan Community Initiatives Fund supports the people and organizations to build up democratic, active, tolerant society in their local communities, which is in his opinion the best weapon against the rise and infiltration of the extremist ideas in a given society.  Of course, sometimes for example the recently held Belgrade Pride in Belgrade, the foundations should manifest their own activism and solidarity, and to position themselves in the first rows for the protection of the rights of any given minority, because that is the way in which democratic rights and tolerant society may be defended.  By offering answers which would help in overcoming the principle causes of the appearance and the rise of extremism, the foundations have a role to respond to the complicated social questions and challenges such as general poverty, social injustice, inequality, a great gap between the rich and the poor.

Grantmakers East Forum, formerly Grantmakers East Group (GEG) was founded in the year 1992 by the group European Foundation Centre (EFC) whose members were active in Central and Eastern Europe and new independent countries.  The group has gathered around for the first time as the following manifestation of the annual general assembly of EFS.  However, as the interest for the group was rising, in line with the development of grants in Central and Eastern Europe and new independent countries, CFG developed into an independent project whose result is the annual meeting, which is being held in other country every year.

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