Panel: Strategies’ Solutions for Youth Issues in Macedonia.    Regional Cooperation in Youth Projects – between fancy and usual life style   Since the NGO market is still dominated by foreign donors and money is power they are the designers of the fashion within the NGO world since couple of years. One of the trend was the regional cooperation equal haute couture for many of us. Is this is still in fashion or is over-passed by new others? For some donors you we have to wear this fancy coat that is complicated to make it in order to solve the appearances: find a partner most of the time in the last minute, give them a task to look serious, negotiate the how much is taking each part if the money comes.     The presentation will respond to the question is the regional cooperation really useful or is just a path preach by donor so, a way to increase the funds and visibility of our own organizations. Many donors in the region initiating funds to support mutual cooperation in the region and many of the organizations who wanted to apply to European Union funds or Stability Pact recall the hard work we have to carry in order to get partners and to finalize a happy agreement and a successful program. Is there any use of and if this criteria will disappear we will continue to look at our neighbor country as a potential partner, client or competitor.   The experience of BCYF (Balkan Children and Youth foundation) as a key player in supporting youth NGOs in the 10 countries in the region shows that there is no  willingness to cross border cooperation in the region although this might position get your project among the preferences. Meantime the partnership program our organization initiated shows the potential of such a program.  For example the Center for Business Development of Pristine visited CEDU 2000+ in Bucharest to learn more about how to build an incubator for youth entrepreneurship, Civic Initiatives Serbia got together with Youth Democracy from Zagreb to exchange experience in training for young people civic participation.   While many of us are looking at the West countries as advanced models, very good examples and lessons learned can be just next door to our neighbors. The cooperation can be extended from NGO-NGO cooperation to our colleagues from government particular these times when most of the countries are leaving the fever of youth policy. The Croatian model in this respect or the lessons learned from Romania can serve to authorities, international organization and youth organizations value information about coalition building and the power of advocacy. In addition, some of the NGOs had been more or less successful in involving business people in their work and Romania offers several good lessons learned that can bee copied and worth trying.   The youth regional cooperation has extended to various networks and offered several good examples that can serve to various purposes as exchange of experience, access to information and to funds. Youth NET, South Eastern European Youth Network, Balkan Idea, Youth Employment Summit, are few examples.   The exercise of regional cooperation is costing time and compromises. Since we are all lagging behind in partnerships at local level is hard to consider the cross countries ones particular when there cultural differences and not only. The cooperation it works only if the benefit is very visible: most of the time money since visibility is not part of the fashion. What about new ideas – stolen or copyrighted, new friends, different cultures and traditions? Or what about the cutting age fashion: merging of organizations so often present in business organization?     Skopje, November 19, 2003   Lorita Constantinescu Program Manager BCYF