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City Bijeljina

Memorandum of understanding signed – Integral approach to social inclusion



​Memorandum of understanding has been signed today at the City Administration with the aim to implement the project – Integral approach to social inclusion, between the Caritas Switzerland (CaCH), the City of Bijeljina and the Citizens’ Association Otaharin.
 
Mayor Ljubiša Petrović and the president of the City Assembly, Aleksandar Đurđević, signed the Memorandum on behalf of the City.
The project is related to income and migrations, as a part of CaCH strategy for the period from 2021 to 2025. It systematically connects five modules for the social inclusion of the most vulnerable population, with the focus on Roma population which is the most marginalised group.
 
Mayor Petrović said that the housing programme for this population was going to be continued, and mentioned another very serious problem – unemployment.
“It is very important to cover large number of problems the Roma are facing in our local community and to give our best to mitigate and solve them. The important fact is that we have established cooperation foundations for the next three calendar years,” said Petrović and thanked Caritas for their partnership again.
 
Dragan Joković of the Association Otaharin expressed gratitude to the representatives of the City and Caritas, especially due to the fact that Bijeljina, with Kakanj, was chosen as a partner local community in BaH.
 
On the other hand, said Joković, Bijeljina justified the trust and showed that it is one of the leading cities when it comes to the inclusion of the Roma population, all through appropriate programmes it creates and implements.
 
“We showed innovativeness and readiness to deal with these problems fundamentally through integral approach. This kind of programme is new in BaH, and it includes elements propagated by European Commission,” said Joković.
He expressed the hope that Bijeljina, by its example, would manage to show to other local communities that, through implementation of individual projects, it is possible to influence the improvement of quality of life of this, unfortunately marginalised group of population in our society.
On behalf of Caritas Switzerland in BaH, Bakir Omukić said that the work in BaH had been very successful so far, but only housing projects were implemented, and now there is something new.
 
“Otaharin and the City of Bijeljina came up with an idea to expand cooperation – to include other segments into all our projects. First of all, we are thinking about education and employment, so the project Integral approach to social inclusion included a number of things, and its value is around two million convertible marks,” said Omukić and expressed his hope that the competent ministry will help with three hundred thousand convertible marks, while the rest of funds would be secured by joint engagement of the City of Bijeljina and Caritas.
He reminded that the project was supported by the governments of Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
 
President of the City Assembly, Aleksandar Đurđević, said that he hoped the signed memorandum would result in a number of quality projects which would change lives of some people.
Bojana Jovanović, programme director at the Association Otaharin, explained that the activities on the implementation of the tasks commenced in January, that they work with beneficiaries actively, and that the Programme for improvement of employment of the Roma population is currently being prepared.
 
“We are currently surveying the citizens of Bijeljina to find out the positions related to the Roma population, and to find out the needs of our beneficiaries, so we could use this project to consider those and address them,” said Bojana Jovanović, and thanked the representatives of the City for their efforts to improve the quality of life of the Roma community in Bijeljina.