REPORT ON THE FIRST TRAINING SESSION AS PART OF THE ADVOCACY AND STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS

Mr. Donald Bison, expert in the rule of law with the OSCE mission in Macedonia and longtime LGBT activist, held a training session at the MASSO offices on May 17th (Sunday). MASSO employees and founders took part in the training session. The training session was focused on the revision on the already existent guidelines which set out the missions, vision, principles and the statute of MASSO.
This training session served as an introduction into a procession of training sessions integrated under the common working title – Advocacy and Strategic Planning.
These training sessions will be organized in the time frame of a couple of months. All training sessions will be held at the MASSO offices, except for the last two day training session which will be held at a hotel where the participants represented by the board of MASSO will finalise the conclusions and documents drafted during the course of the previous sessions.
The session began by elaborating on the basic topic on which rests the drafting of the mission of an NGO which has the human rights of a set target group as its focus.
After the groups elaboration of the internal and external intentions and causes for the preparation of the mission’s statement, the discussion continued with serious suggestions as who what a such a short but content filled statement should entail, i.e. what is the true intent as to why we exists as an organization and what is the final results we would like to achieve, what is that we are planning to do in order to achieve our ultimate goal, and finally what are the core value in which we believe and which one of these is the most important?
The key elements to which our joint reflection led us were as follows:
Visibility, legal changes, social awareness, strengthening the community and equality. Each of these goals was elaborated on in the direction of the modes in order to attain the specific goal. Visibility by animating the media, public events and coalitions; legal changes – lobbying and advocacy; social awareness – through positive examples cultural events, public debates, our web page, using experts/social elite, strengthening the community via e-mail, web forums, cultural events, sports events, regional offices. It was concluded that equality is the point which unifies all of the abovementioned topics.
The draft statement to which we arrives was: MASSO’s mission is to achieve equality for LGBT individuals by advocating for legal changes, raising public awareness to LGBT issues and enhancing the visibility of LGBT individuals.
The second topic which we discussed was MASSO’s vision. The draft definition states: MASSO’s vision is of a world free of all forms of discrimination where human rights and differences among people are equally respected.
The dilemma which were encountered during the last part of the session was the question whether the need exists to create a separate statement which would be focused on the basic values or should interest be shifted to the basic principles of the organization. After the differences between these two fields were discussed the team of MASSO decided that keeping the principles in currently more necessary, as far as fundamental values are concerned we concluded that we have already dealt with them during the process of defining our mission and vision of the organization. The fundamental terms on which we decided, and which are supposed to make up our work principles are as follows: Professionalism, networking, communication with institutions of all kinds, democratic decision making by including the thoughts and ideas of our members, working on the regional level and creating a safe environment and conditions to protect all of those who feel unsafe where they live due to their sexual orientation.
It was decided to leave the final version which would unite these terms in the framework of a given statement in order to hear the opinion of the members and other co-workers in order to come together and in a democratic manner come to a final statement which would serve as the basis for the future work of the organization. MASSO would be delighted if all of our members and those who work with us gave their contribution, suggestions and thoughts in regards to the remaining definitions by which we would come to a final product which would be the result of a strong democratic process.