Omladinska Kulturna Organizacija (Youth Cultural Organisation)

Omladinska Kulturna Organizacija - O.K.O (Youth Cultural Organisation) is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental youth organization, established in 2010 in Mladenovac, Serbia with mission to stimulate and sustain the personal, professional and social development of the local youth. Since then we have grown up and extended our work and activities to national, regional and European level by organizing various local and international projects. We are dedicated to fostering young people’s active, civic and responsible participation to the educational, social, cultural and economic environment of the communities they live in by supporting, counseling, informing and organizing activities for them. The goals of the Association are: raising social awareness, cultural education of citizens, encouraging active participation of young people and educating them about the importance of their rights and roles in society as well as public advocacy for the important role of young people in decision-making on social issues. We achieve this by working in the following areas: human rights, rule of law, democracy, support and work with marginalised groups in Serbia and people with fewer opportunities, political education, civil society, community awareness, volunteerism, respect and promotion of interethnic relations, promotion of solidarity and tolerance as well as cooperation with local and international organisation which are sharing our values and vision. O.K.O at the moment has more than 20 active volunteers who belong to different ethnic, religious or gender groups that live in Serbia on age from 15 to 30 years old. We are working with young people with fewer opportunities and have good practical experience integrating them in our projects. Many of our international events take place in rural areas where we include marginalized youth like unemployed young people, young people from geographically isolated areas and young people with a hard social background (orphans, from broken families, with immigrant background, etc). The founders of O.K.O and some of its members have been active in non-formal education and youth work since 2007 either as participants, coordinators or organisers in various local, national and international projects on different topics. During these years of our work we gathered a lot of experience, knowledge, practices, tools and techniques on non-formal education, youth work and project management while working with young people from different cultural backgrounds from all around Europe and promoting intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism. We have knowledge and years of experience in project writing, project planning, project implementation and evaluation of projects. O.K.O is a one of the founders and a member of Omladinski Savez Srbije (Youth Union of Serbia) which gather different types of non-profit organizations and, as an independent body, represents the interests of all its members in order to improve living conditions and better standards of youth on the territory of the Republic of Serbia.