Today, UNFICYP Civil Affairs Section hosted the second NGO networking meeting of the year. The virtual meeting had the participation of more than 20 civil society representatives from across the island and guest speakers from the British Council Cyprus and “QueensOfMoney”, a money management program for women.
Marilena Kyriakou from the British Council presented the COOPower project, which aims to raise public awareness of co-operative and social economy enterprises as alternative, inclusive and innovative approaches to tackling youth unemployment, and will provide practical support to young people in Cyprus, Greece and Croatia. The project promotes the value of social enterprises and co-operatives as viable career pathways, while at the same time supporting a group of early career journalists to highlight the power of the social economy to create positive change. Cleopatra Kitti and Emine Colak also joined the discussion to present their recent work on a UN/World Bank report on a gender sensitive socio-economic impact assessment for a settlement in Cyprus. The organization’s work generally focuses on how to approach our relationship with money, but also basic knowledge of financial terms (such as cashflow, debt, interest, guarantees, pensions, investments). It also proposes 3 tools on how to set a horizon/plan for our immediate and long term life, how to build a forward looking cashflow, how to understand our asset worth and our equity (compared to our liabilities/debt). Facilitating these monthly meetings is part of UNFICYP's Civil Affairs efforts to encourage inter-communal dialogue for the purpose of confidence and trust building between both communities across the divide.