The Balkan Civil Society Development Network participated on the Closing Conference of the project Sharing the experiences of Visegrad Cooperation in the Western Balkans and the Eastern Neighbourhood, which was held on March 9-11, 2011 in Budapest. Ilina Nesik presented BCSDN at inovations and best practices panel discussion. This event was the final part of a two year program, implemented in close cooperation with a variety of governmental and civil society stakeholders from the Visegrad Group, the Western Balkans and the Eastern Partnership countries. Core activities of the project were organized around four inter-regional workshops in the partner regions in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina to examine key issue areas of experience sharing and fields of cooperation, such as regional security, economic cooperation, civil society and cross-border cooperation. As an outcome, the ICDT expects work on strengthening the cooperation within these regions as well as among them and the Visegrad Group and the EU more broadly. All materials regarding the entire project can be downloaded from the following website.
The conference topic was the proposal of the Visegrad Fund member states to establish similar fund in the states of Western Balkan and the EaP countries. On that occasion, the participants were introduced to the recommendations and good practice examples as part of the past achievements of the Visegrad Fund. This Fund is considered to be one of the best models of regional cooperation between transition countries in Europe. BCSDN was invited to present the network in the best practices and innovations panel through which a couple of regional initiatives have been presented as a successful example of regional cooperation.