Velise Mugose bb
Bracana Bracanovica 75
81000 POdgorica
الجبل الأسود
- Democracy and community development
- Gender
- Human rights
- Youth and education
Our mission - Improving the rights of parents and their children in Montenegro with active participation of parents’ community in those processes, through public advocating, as well as promotion of those rights, education and informing parents about them and cooperation with institutions.
We believe in:
Equal opportunities - right to live in encouraging environment that offers possibilities for development in accordance with potentials and guaranteed rights
Preserving and encouraging families – We believe in a society which is friendly towards parents, children and families, and which creates better conditions for parenting.
Team work - Mutual respect, strong will for changes and direction towards the same goal
Humanism – Support, empathy and tolerance in the moments when families need them most
Some of our activities are:
• Charity actions ’Share, Together We Can Do More’, during which we collected and distributed clothes, school books and school supplies, toys,... to the socially disadvantaged families in whole Montenegro.
• In cooperation with the Dnevne novine daily we started the initiative ’Introduce Podgorica Maternity Ward to the 21st century’, during which we introduced the
public to the deficiencies that exist in that healthcare institution and the problems which their users face on a daily basis.
• School for Parents project which gathered parents, who attended the classes led by a psychologist. The project helped parents prepare and face with different challenges of parenting. The funding was provided trough the Fund for Active Citizenship (FAKT), financed by the EU through the EU Delegation in Montenegro.
• NGO Parents initiated a campaign for improvement of conditions in public preschool institutions named ’Children Deserve the Best’, focusing primarily on Podgorica, Bar, Budva, Herceg Novi... where the problem of overcrowding in the public preschool institutions is the most pressing. The campaign resulted in providing eight new schoolrooms within the existing facilities. Our association also launched a donor campaign to which eight companies responded, procuring necessary equipment and toys to the Podgorica based kindergartens. However, not pleased with the accomplished results, the Association carried out collecting signatures to an e-petition to the government that called upon the government to build new facilities. The government undertook building of 6 new kindergartens, with the funds obtained through the Council of Europe Development Bank’s grants.
• We are offering free legal counseling in the form of helping and advising pregnant women and new mothers on how to fully realize their labor law rights since September 2013. This started as a project financed by the US Embassy, but later on our members continued helping on a voluntary basis.
• The Parents Association has been very active in the field of promotion of breastfeeding in Montenegro. We have been celebrating the World Breastfeeding Week since 2012, and the National Breastfeeding Promotion Week.
• We have been a partner to company Telenor on their project Conquer the Internet, Surf Smartly for the last two years.
• We carried out a project Pripovjedaonica, with the aim of developing a support program that would promote tolerance, nourishing differences and valuing friendship among the preschool-aged children, within which we organized 13
workshops in preschool institution Djina Vrbica in Podgorica. The project was financed by fAKT.
• Through a project financed by fAKT, supported by the EU Delegation to Montenegro, the NGO Parents created with the Ministry of Health the national breastfeeding guidelines that define protocols and activities of medical workers regarding
breastfeeding. The lack of adequate and timely counseling has been recognized by mothers, but also by the authorities, as something that in the biggest part influences the low breastfeeding rate in Montenegro. The guidelines should help medical workers in giving right advice, and mothers to know what adequate advice should be.
• NGO Parents has established the first peer counseling breastfeeding group, consisted of mothers who are being trained to help other mothers to overcome problems with breastfeeding.
• NGO Parents also initiated the action of restoring old and building new playgrounds under the name “Return Playgrounds to Children”. It was initiated in Podgorica, where we restored, together with the citizens and companies, two playgrounds. In the meantime, the action spread to
Budva, Niksic, Cetinje, Ulcinj... In those activities out primary partners are companies that donate playground toys, but also other NGOs and foundations.
We have a over 300 members various profesional skils, and thanks to portal roditelji.me and groups on social networks, we communicate with about 60 thousand parents from Montenegro per month (statistics from Google statistics). That way we recognize their needs and we constantly receive inputs for our initiatives. With these mechanisms we will be able to influence the advancement of the rights of parents and their children in Montenegro more vigorously. Active participation of parents in our actions, support in advocacy and promotion initiatives, makes a strong front of critical mass for achieving results, as all our actions are community and need driven and supported. Our strength is gathered around the participative and transparent approach, evidence-based advocacy and strong negotiation skills with the institution of systems. It represents a firm background for further impact on society.
Because, we want to achieve partnership and cooperation with organizations dealing with the same or similar issues, and to further educate and train our profesional and managerial capacities.