On September 30, the RESIS Institute and the Local Community Development Foundation – Stip held a meeting with civil society organizations that represent the rights of vulnerable categories of citizens from the Southeast region, on the occasion of the establishment of the new community media platform #LocalActive, part of the LocalActiveMedia project.

The meeting was attended by representatives from five active local organizations from the Southeast who showed interest and support in implementing the LocalActiveMedia project and indicated the need to introduce a platform that will serve as community media, like #LocalActive. The representatives of the organizations that attended showed their interest in their active involvement in the implementation of the Mapping of vulnerable categories of citizens in the Eastern and South-Eastern regions, which will complete the first phase of the LocalActiveMedia project and will serve as a basis for a thorough research that will assess the needs and the communication habits of groups in the local community.

Among the organizations that attended were representatives from: Regional Center for Sustainable Development (ROCR) from Gevgelija, Happy People from Josifovo, Support from Gevgelija, Women's Organization from Strumica and Women's Action from Radovish. The meeting discussed the problems faced by civil society organizations in accessing the public sphere. In traditional media: there is generally a lack of interest in covering stories and news related to the position of vulnerable groups and the activities of the civil sector, and local media are financially unsustainable and often do not have enough resources to cover these topics. Therefore, civil society organizations most often use social networks as platforms for sharing information with the vulnerable groups they work with. From there, the establishment of this type of online platform of the community, which will primarily aim to advance the communication rights of vulnerable categories of citizens, but also to serve civil society organizations to approach the general public more effectively, is of great importance, especially in these two regions in the country.

#LocalActive as community media will represent an open platform that will be used by civil society organizations from the Eastern and Southeastern regions, for which content of interest to local communities and groups will be created in order to advance the exercise of the communication rights of vulnerable categories of citizens, but and to increase their influence on local governance. LocalActiveMedia is implemented by the RESIS Institute and the Foundation for Local Community Development – ​​Shtip, and is supported by the non-profit National Endowment for Democracy (NED).