The Association for sustainable development SFERA INTERNATIONAL – Bitola (in continuation: SFERA INTERNATIONAL – Bitola) focuses on youth and all citizens of the municipality of Bitola to achieve its main goals, activities and actions in accordance to our mission that is raise awareness and to educate local communities, using non-formal education methods, about environment protection, cultural and natural heritage, healthy lifestyle, long-term sustainable youth development, and youth active participation through volunteerism in North Macedonia.
SFERA INTERNATIONAL, as an association, will achieve its goals with coordination and regulations determined by the Constitution of Republic of North Macedonia, as well as other legal norms which regulate this area.
A member of the Association can be any citizen, in coordination with the Statute of the association. Membership in the association is voluntary, and can be achieved with accepting the Statute of the association, the goals of the association, and signing an application. The organization has more than 600 members with profiles ranging from high-school students to professionals.
Past projects, prior to Statute change, have included:
- Tackling the problems of poverty and unemployment
- Developing leadership skills and democracy among youth
- Fire and environmental protection and education
- Organizing trainings, Workshops and camps on a national and international level
- Networking with national and international organizations and networks
Current focus after the Statute changes in March 2015:
- Organizing trainings, Workshops and camps on a national and international level
- Networking with national and international organizations and networks
- Protection of the environment, cultural and natural heritage
- Promoting sustainable development and the usage of alternative sources of energy
- Promoting healthy lifestyle – sport, healthy diet
- Development of professional and leadership skills among young people
- Education of youngsters in the field of crisis management (floods, earthquakes, fires, erosion and other natural disasters)
- Promoting non-formal education and encouraging the creation of systems to support young local, national and international level
- Promoting youth activism and active citizenship among young people and informing youth about all the opportunities they have
- Raising the awareness of equality, tolerance, democracy and the introduction of human rights to the youngsters
- Support and facilitate the process of Europeanization of the country
We first started working with the program “Youth in Action” because of the common project topics such as environment and sport, art and culture, national heritage, health etc. Currently, we work with Erasmus+ program to achieve our goals on an international level in order to create a bigger youth impact.