On July 13th, 2011, in cooperation with the humanitarian organization “Ear of Goodness”, we secured 7 electronic wheelchairs for our members. The president of APD “Shpresa”, Mr. Elvat Muaremi thanked the representatives of “Ear of Goodness” and promised future cooperation as well.

- This project was financially supported by the City of Skopje, the sector for sports.
-We are pleased that a project like this was supported for the first time because these kids, people with disabilities, members of our association, never had the possibility to have any kind of contact with sports.
-This project started implementing on May 5th, and continued it’s activities until June 25th. During this period, the activities were implemented in the Elementary school “Liria” where we also hired the professor for sports activities so that we can engage these 40 children in more professional activities, 3 hours a week.
-This was a nice surprise for us, the children’s parents and for the professor since this was the first time he had to organize activities for children with disabilities.
-As planned, the finale was organized in the recreational center Saraj, Skopje, for which we secured transport, drinks and meals for all participants. It was obvious that this project caused a great satisfaction for our members and their parents because they all kept repeating how happy they are for their children since this was the first time most of them ever had contact with any sports activities.
-If we can find donors, the activities of this project will continue.

-Just as planned, we are now in the 5th phase of the project “Developing Local Action Plans”, the draft version of which is already completed, and it is planned to organize public debates in the involved municipalities where first of all, we will present the draft versions and than we will give the opportunity to everyone present, which are the municipality councilors, the working groups that developed the plans, the representatives of public institutions and citizens, to give their critics, suggestions and proposals if we missed something. All of this is organized with the purpose to create full and substantial strategic documents.

The public debate organized in the municipality of Brvenica, 09.03.2011




The public debate organized in the municipality of Butel, 23.03.2011



-The public debate organized in the municipality of Gostivar, 25.03.2011




-The public debate organized in the municipality of Kisela Voda, 12.04.2011

-This project has been financially supported by the American foundation German Marshall Fund. The main objectives of this project are:

- Creating local disability action plans in order to secure better living conditions for people with disabilities and their families
- Initiating the cooperation between the local self-government and the civic sector
- Initiating the cooperation between the civic sector itself

-The sustainability of this project is guaranteed by the fact that we are creating a document that will be accepted by the municipalities themselves and also, APD Shpresa has the obligation to visit all the municipalities and evaluate the implementation of the plans, a year after they are accepted.

-This project includes 4 different Macedonian municipalities, such as the municipality of Gostivar, Bervenica, Kisela Voda and the municipality of Butel. The implementation of this project started at August 1st, 2010 and will end at May 31st, 2011.
-Considering the fact that this project lasts almost a year, the foreseen activities are separated in a few phases, starting with the meetings with all the municipality mayors where we informed them with all the project details and the purpose of this entire process. Of course, an official agreement was achieved in order to secure the fluency of the project. We must say, even during the preliminary meeting, the mayors were fascinated by the idea and they gave their full support without any reserves, taking in consideration that its in their citizens’ best interest to develop this plan.

The first meeting was held during August 5th, 2010, with the mayor of the municipality of Butel, Mr. Petre Latinovski


The second meeting was held during August 12th, 2010, with the mayor of the municipality of Bervenica, Mr. Enver Pajaziti


The third meeting was held during August 14th, 2010, with the mayor of the municipality of Gostivar, Mr. Rufi Osmani.


The forth meeting was held during August 30th, 2010, with the mayor of the municipality of Kisela Voda, Mr. Marjan Gorcev.
-Shortly After that, just like we agreed with the mayors, they assigned a contact person that helped us coordinate all the rest of the activities.
-The next activity was the forming of the working groups that are supposed to be formed by 10-15 members, 3 of which are representatives of the municipality itself (the sector of urbanism, education and social affairs) and the rest are representatives of the NGOs working in the territory of those municipalities, the center of social affairs, the agency of employment, local medias, special educational centers, special schools and the business sector. The forming of these groups lasted until September 30th, 2010.
-These 4 working groups were obligated to have a 2- day training which helped them learn the situation with the momentary laws of Macedonia, the international convention for the rights of people with disabilities brought by the UN during December 13th, 2006, the Agenda 22- the standard rules, the European convention and different declarations that are an obligation to a state or just declarations. Each member of the working group got every material that was included in this training on a CD. During these trainings, we also signed the memorandums of cooperation between APD Shpresa, the municipalities and the rest of the working groups, representatives of different public institutions.

The first training took place in the municipality of Bervenica, during the 4th-5th of October, 2010



The second training took place in the municipality of Gostivar, during the 20th-21th of October, 2010


The third training took place in the municipality of Butel, during the 25th-26th of November, 2010


The forth training took place in the municipality of Kisela Voda, during the 17th-18th of January, 2011

-The following activity was organizing the 3- day workshops where we now started to have concrete results of our activities where all of us, in a participative way, identify every need and problem that the people with disabilities deal with, starting from the public awareness, social protection, social services, education, physical access, access to information, sports, culture and employment.
-APD Shpresa, together with the facilitator and trainer, Mr. Afrim Iljazi who is an expert in this field, processes all the gathered data and creates the first draft version of the Local Action Plans.

The first workshop was held in the municipality of Gostivar, during the 09th-10th-11th of December, 2010.
The second workshop was held in the municipality of Butel, during the 12th-13th-14th of January, 2011.


The third workshop was held in the municipality of Bervenica, during the 07th-08th-09th of February, 2011.


The forth workshop was held in the municipality of Kisela Voda, during the 14th-15th-16th of February, 2011.


-The process continues to be implemented.

Once more, APD Shpresa proved its devotion to her members by securing 5 electronic wheelchairs for those who were in need. This donation was received by an unanimous person and we are very grateful for the cooperation since we managed to achieve the donor’s goal and fulfill the needs of 5 of our members, 4 of them being pupils in regular schools.
There is no doubt that this was a grand humane jester for which we are very grateful and hope that we will manage to secure other donations similar to this one.
This donation was dispersed in the presence of the person designated by the donor during October 26th, 2010, at the APD Shpresa’s offices.

Considering the fact that the family budget of this category of people does not allow them to afford a summer vacation, APD Shpresa appealed to the Red Cross of Skopje with an official appeal so they will allow a few of our members to have a summer holiday staying in their Hotel. We received a positive answer for 5 of our members which they used starting from September 15th and returning on the 20th. They stayed in the Red Cross Hotel in Struga.
-This is the beginning of an activity that is a part of our program and we hope that in the future we will be able to find donors that can satisfy the needs of a group even bigger than this one.

Considering we are in the holly month of Ramadan- 2010, same as the last 3 years, the meat company “Uka- Komerc” which is located in the municipality of Saraj, Skopje, donated 250 packages with meat products to the association, in value of 30 Euros each. Knowing that Macedonia is in a deep economical crisis, this donation is very welcomed for our members.
We hope this cooperation will continue in the future.
Also, in cooperation with other donors that wish to stay unanimous, we have dispersed over 2500 kg of food and hygienic articles of all sorts.