Recently EUREGHA has had the utmost pleasure to expand our membership to the Balkan region and welcome a new associate member into our network of regional and local health authorities in Europe. The Association of Kosovo Municipalities (AKM) represents 34 out of 38 municipalities in Kosovo. AKM was established in 2001 and works on lobbying activities and capacity building for local politicians. It works through 20 sector specific Collegia, such as the Collegium for Health and Special Welfare. Chairs and Deputy Chairs of these Collegia have seats in ministerial working groups to provide inputs on legislation. In addition to lobbying and capacity building, AKM is a member of different international networks, such as NALAS – Network of Associations of Local Authorities of South-East Europe, and the European Council for Municipalities and Regions.
The current priorities of the Collegium for Health and Special Welfare include supporting the development of leadership programs and tools, promoting high performance, supporting human resources planning to enable continuous quality improvement, promoting functional continuity of local governance, and strengthening social services.
AKM decided to pursue EUREGHA membership because for them, sharing experiences is very important. Sazan Ibrahimi, Executive Director, said:
“We are using all these international mechanisms and networks to learn the best practices in a certain sector, and we wanted to do more of this regarding social welfare and health so we started looking for an organization that could help us with that. We found EUREGHA and were privileged the application to become an associate member.”
EUREGHA is excited to have AKM on board as an associate member and looking forward to a pleasant and fruitful collaboration in the future!
AKM introduced and presented itself also at the EUREGHA General Assembly, review the slides here.
