Ventspils Regional NGO Support Centre

Ventspils Regional Non-Governmental Organization Support Centre was established in 1999 with the aim to supply informational, consultative and technical help in order to support Ventspils regional non-governmental organizations and to develop a society. The long term objective is to become a professional organization with 3 main tasks: • Information – big database of all kinds of project, legislation, EU and other NGO related information, regular info-pages with the newest actual information; • Education and consulting about human rights, society’s interest advocacy possibilities and mechanisms, NGO founding, attraction of funding, philanthropy actualization, establishing cooperation with the local municipalities and regional mass media to inform society about actualities of NGO sector and organizing educational events; • NGO viewpoints representation in local municipalities and state institutions. Ventspils Regional NGO Support Centre’s representatives participate in Youth activity commission in Ventpils City Council, as well as in Youth leisure time activity project evaluation commission for more than 5 years. For the last 4 years the organization’s activities are organized by implementing different projects and by being a partner in other organizations’ projects. Since 2004 Ventspils Regional NGO Support Centre has implemented projects including young people. Most successful projects: At the end of 2010 Ventspils regional (NGO) support center obtained the financial support for project „Participation. Cooperation. Development.” by participating in European Social Fund sub-activity "Strengthening administrative capacity of non-governmental organizations" project competition. Project duration is 2 years. It is aimed to promote improvement of NGO cooperation skills for effective civil society participation in local municipality policy making processes. Association is the single organization in Ventspils city and municipality that provides services not only for 22 organizations of the centre but to any NGO, interest group and society in general. 67 NGO and interest groups have been registered as users in Ventspils city and municipality. Organization`s strategy includes directions of action that foresees to achieve the strategic aim – NGO center as significant and proficient partner in development of Ventspils and Ventspils municipality. According to strategy there are defined two main directions of organizations` action: 1. Protection of NGO interests. 2. Strengthening of NGO. Representatives of organization work in 2 working groups and 9 commissions by Ventspils City Council. Ventspils regional NGO support center is a member of Association “Civic Alliance Latvia” and cooperates with other regional NVO support center in whole Latvia. Organization field of activity is Children and youth, Human rights, discrimination reduction (sexual orientation, age, gender, religion, disability a.o.), Democracy promotion, Civil society participation, Society integration , Seniors, Social inclusion, Health, Environment and sustainable development