Foundation for Debate and Education IDEA Southeast Europe is the lead partner of the Balkan Debate and Public Policy Challenge
IDEA Southeast Europe is registered as a foundation established under Macedonian law, on September 14th, 2012. Established to serve the dual roles of (1) regional outreach and development, and (2) network resource development.
Since its inception, IDEA SEE has transgressed the initial roles and has positioned itself as a novel program developer, establishing new and alternate programmatic activities, towards the development and promotion of argumentation, advocacy, art expression, media literacy, critical thinking, and debate.
We work developing tool-kits and methodologies that transcend traditional argumentation, allowing for expressing one’s voice through a multitude of channels and communities.
IDEA works with young people in communities with little or no history of debate or informed public discussion. We teach critical thinking, advocacy, conflict resolution, public speaking skills, media literacy, digital storytelling, media, аnd social media advocacy and art and design for advocacy. We believe that debate is a valuable educational tool, not only because repeated studies have shown that it improves critical thinking, academic achievement, and public speaking, but also because it encourages the desire to engage in social and political issues from informed and rational positions
The Balkan Forum
The Balkan Forum (The BF) is a regional cross-sectoral platform that works to create a new vision for the Balkan region based on economic development, democratic values and the rule of law. It promotes a resource efficient, greener, and more competitive region that is based on collaboration and diversity. We adopt a positive approach as the guiding principle for our activities; rather than re-emphasizing the problems that have divided the Balkan populations for many years now, we focus heavily on the positive elements that unite them.
We encourage cross-border dialogue to generate new thinking and joint initiatives on regional challenges and opportunities to education, energy, and environment, tourism, labor market/human capital, youth, media and diaspora, by also linking with – and learning from -other in-country and regional initiatives such as Berlin Process and Nordic Council.
The Balkan Forum initiative was launched at the first Annual Balkan Forum meeting held on 7-9 February 2013 in Thessaloniki, Greece. The Forum gathered diverse stakeholders and leaders from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia. Over 50 participants from civil society, the private sector, academia, and government worked together to generate ideas and innovative strategies to deepen regional collaboration and catalyze economic development, drawing the region’s strengths and comparative advantages.
Južne vesti
Juzne Vesti is the first regional info portal which raises the level of awareness of south Serbia citizens and understanding about current issues in South Serbia through the collection and dissemination of information, research and analytical journalism.
For the last almost 10 years since our establishment, Juzne Vesti have succeeded in building the reputation of an independent, incorrupt, and transparent media, which primarily works in the interest of citizens of the South and South-Eastern Serbia.
The young team, consisting of 15 journalists, programmers and activists who have built their career in civil sector, have successfully created the information portal which is proud of its large audience of readers – average of 1,3 million pageviews per month, over 145K facebook fans and 11,9K followers on Twitter.
Moreover, Juzne Vesti’s work has developed into its outstanding reputation with national and international communities. One of the largest components of Juzne Vesti’s work targets investigative journalism, primarily on issues related to manipulations in public sector, spending taxpayers’ funds, corruption and misuse of public resources in general.
Juzne Vesti are members of many networks, to name the most important: Network for integrity, NUNS, Association of online media AOM (one of the founders), Local Press, etc.
We can clearly say that Juzne Vesti are an independent media in south Serbia established with the key idea to create a place where the voice of citizens and society can be heard and opinion presented. Juzne Vesti are well known as a fighter against corruption, transparency promoter and democratic values supporter.