Empowering the local branches and youth of United Reform Action, and increasing capacity in the think tank Green Politics in Montenegro

The long-term partnership especially aims at three objectives: empowering local branches of URA, strengthening the youth wing of URA with a specific focus on local branches, and increasing the capacity of the think tank Green Politics to serve as an effective supporting partner to URA.

The partnership was initiated by a productive pilot phase with a long-term perspective. This, however, was not without challenges: the complex political situation in the country as well as COVID-19 measures was a greatly demanding environment for establishing a partnership – but timely mitigation efforts and successful communication between SF and URA made it possible for URA to utilize the political crisis to recruit young peoples for their youth forum. This was essentially the goal of the pilot project: to establish the infrastructure of URA’s youth forum. The dialogues, workshops, and youth involvement led to the formation of the URA youth forum as an official party institution, thus achieving the initial goal. By the end of the project, two new local youth fora had been established in the cities of Danilovgrad and Herceg Novi.

Building on the valuable insights and successful experiences of the pilot phase, URA and the Green Left established a long-term partnership. This partnership was formalized in 2023 following a series of visits, dialogues, vision exchanges, and workshops. The ongoing workshops gather members of the youth wings and of local branches to obtain and exchange knowledge and learnings, and to train policy development skills. At this point, the youth forum of URA continues to gain grounds, and has advanced far beyond the two initial cities – and so does the local branches, being particularly active in their policy development on waste management, which continues to be a significant green problem in Montenegro.