PORAKA NOVA

PORAKA NOVA is a non-profit organization active since 1984 in the town of Struga, Republic of Macedonia. Its main goal during these years has been the improvement of the quality of life of people with intellectual disability and their families.
The Vision of Poraka Nova is an improved quality of life for people with intellectual disabilities and their families.
The Mission of Poraka Nova is to work on effective promotion of the rights of people with intellectual disabilities and their families, in a way that all citizens related to the intellectual disability, will have an opportunity to receive adequate support and resources they need.
The Principles on which is based the work of Poraka Nova are Equal opportunities, Transparency, Responsibility, Partnership, Tolerance, Sustainability, Inclusion, Participation.
The Objectives of Poraka Nova for improvement of the quality of life of the people with intellectual disabilities are:
• Respecting the human rights of people with intellectual disabilities;
• Nondiscrimination of the people with intellectual disabilities;
• Encouraging people with intellectual disabilities to rely on their own strengths and skills;
• Autonomy and independence of people with intellectual disabilities in the use of services;
• Economic, social, health and juridical protection of the people with intellectual disabilities;
• Social justice, social integration, and inclusion.
PORAKA NOVA has more than 100 members with disabilities, and more than 450 members without disabilities, coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds and different ethnic groups, considering the important presence of minorities in Struga. Our staff is composed by young high-qualified professionals and it makes use of the participation of local volunteers. PORAKA NOVA offers excellent working conditions and facilities, where the beneficiaries feel very comfortable. The families of PWIDs find tremendous support in our organization, witnessing the improvement of their loved one’s quality of life. They are also discharged of providing constant care, contributing to foster their employability. We involve the families in various activities, organize periodically seminars and publish information targeted to the families. Our work and dedication give a long-term impact on the life of people with disabilities, and also on their families’ life. Some of our beneficiaries are employed and have a fulfilling social life. Some of them see the Day Care Center as their home. Thanks to Poraka Nova, the families can have a respite from their everyday engagement with the member with a disability, and may have more free time to contribute in different ways for their families and their personal life.

Poraka Nova main scope of work is separated in several key programs, which have impact on the improvement of the life quality of the people with disabilities, and all marginalized communities in general.
Poraka Nova has a sufficient number of services covering all target groups of the association, and with their work and actions, they affect the realization of the vision, mission, and objectives of the association, as well as directing the programs in the same units. The Association offers services for people with disabilities, families with a member with disabilities, employees, and volunteers of the association, and service for training and research.
Key Programs at PORAKA NOVA:
1. SOCIAL SERVICES.
In the frames of the Social Services Program, since 2004 is active the Day Care Centre for people with intellectual disabilities. Around 18 beneficiaries attend the service on a daily basis.
Besides of that, 5 years in a row we offer Individual Lessons for Early Treatment and Education (ILETE) as a service offered to children with disabilities in their developmental age. The service Family Respite is offered to parents and families that have member with disability which need assistance, in that way we substitute the family care when needed.
Based on the services ILETE and Family Respite, in February 2022 Poraka Nova started a social enterprise for offering social services to marginalized communities, called NEGA Poraka Nova (CARE Poraka Nova). The social enterprise is offering services such as: family respite for people with disabilities, care and assistance for people with Alzheimer, care and assistance for people with Multiple Sclerosis, palliative care and assistance, massages and physiotherapy, speech therapy for people with disabilities, speech therapy for people that recover from stroke, general speech therapy, special education for children in developmental period, senso-motor therapy, psychological support for families, introduction and mentoring in work environment for people with disabilities, professional orientation for people with disabilities, personal assistance for people with disabilities, Reiki therapy, and other not mentioned here.
2. EMPOWERED EMPLOYMENT.
Poraka Nova has continuous collaboration with the cooperatives, companies and public institutions and organizations in order to create new employment opportunities for people with disabilities. We provide personal orientation to the people with disabilities, and also empowerment and training in order to gain new skills and rely on their own capabilities. We act as coordinating organization in the process of connecting the companies and the potential employees with disability. We offer mentoring during the process of employment and during the process of adaptation of the employee in the new working position. We also offer psycho-social support of the employees, the family and the companies.
Poraka Nova is a key member of the national network for street paper Lice v lice, which acts as a social enterprise where people from marginalized groups are employed or engaged as vendors of the street magazine. Poraka Nova has the first and only employed magazine vendor in Macedonia, through a developed business plan for his engagement as vendor.
3. ADVOCACY AND SELF-ADVOCACY.
This program has a scope of activities related to advocacy and self-advocacy of people with intellectual disabilities. In the frames of Poraka Nova we have Families and Advocates Council and Self-advocates Council.
In collaboration with the NGO MKC we offer Free of charge Juristic Support to people with disabilities, in order to ease the access to social justice for the citizens, especially the vulnerable and marginalized communities, in a way that they will have protection of their civic and human rights.
In 2021 we started developing an initiative called Self-Advocate Influencers, which is implemented in the frames of the NEUEYT project. Through this initiative, young people from marginalized communities will learn how to represent themselves and the whole community they belong to. Self-advocate influencer is an activity that aims at making youngsters from under-represented communities work in pairs with other youngsters. They will work on modules focused on gaining knowledge on working with social media and expressing themselves through different digital tools. The main goal is to be heard and provoke a reaction from the relevant policy makers. To develop digital skills for youngsters from underrepresented communities. To allow youngsters who are not under-represented get more community aware by directly supporting and mentoring the youngsters from the underrepresented communities.
We continuously work of social inclusion and social justice for the people with disabilities, and in the frame of this sub-program we implement the project Face to face with the disinformation and the hate speech.
Poraka Nova offers courses for digital skills for people with intellectual disabilities, and how they can actively use them in their everyday life.
4. FAMILY SUPPORT.
The program includes several services, such as:
- Family support for information, guidance and counseling of families which have a member with intellectual disability;
- Courses for families;
- Interfamily support, which includes support between parents and support between siblings.
5. INCLUSIVE SPORT.
Poraka Nova works on promotion od accessible and inclusive sport, recreation and healthy lifestyle. We have active collaboration with local, national and international sport clubs, through which we offer Accessible Fitness Lessons, and Accessible Judo Lessons. We take participation in the Special Olympics Sport Events, where our basketball team was a national vice-champion.
As a cross-program activity is our Recreational Race 3.21 Run for celebrating the International Down Syndrome Day. The aim of the race is to raise the awareness not only for the people with Down Syndrome (and people with disabilities in general), but also for the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle by the people with and without disability.
Poraka Nova develops a Strategy for inclusive sport activities, with a special accent on the water and mountain sports (based on the region we live in).
6. INCLUSIVE CULTURE.
In the frames of the Inclusive Culture Program, Poraka Nova organizes inclusive courses for theatre, dances and singing, also photography and creative writing. Our theatre group composed of people with disabilities and young volunteers presented various acts, such as Hansel and Gretel (children theater), Uri - the kind ghost, and Struga shown trough the eel adventure (shadow theatre), presented in the towns around Macedonia.
In the frames of the Day Care Centre exists the creative handicrafts workshop, where people with disabilities learn creative and entrepreneurial skills. Inspired by this handicraft workshop, our volunteer opened a social enterprise for arts and crafts, where Poraka Nova was mentor and partner.
As a cross-program action, Poraka Nova promotes the need of accessibility in the culture, especially in the museums, archeological sites, galleries, theaters, and other culture institutions.
7. INCLUSIVE TOURISM.
Poraka Nova is a pioneer in Macedonia, and in the Balkan Region in promoting topics such as accessible tourism, inclusive tourism, senior tourism, social tourism, and responsible tourism. We are the first and only organization from the Balkan Region which is a member of ENAT - the European Network for Accessible Tourism, and of ISTO - The International Social Tourism Organisation. We are spreading the list of collaborators in the field on national, regional, European and intercontinental level, by implementing projects relevant to this program, and continuously organize and attend seminars, courses and fairs on the topic. We are developing a business plan for funding a social enterprise for offering products and services for improving the accessibility in the tourism sector in Southeast Europe. Our next goal is obtaining ISO standard for accessibility in the tourism.
8. SOCIAL INNOVATION.
As a nonprofit organization, Poraka Nova doesn’t have own financial resources, so starting from 2011 we got interested in opportunities that the social innovation and social entrepreneurship are offering, so we could make the organization self-sustainable. Poraka Nova became a member of SIC Europe (Social Innovation Community).
Poraka Nova funded two social enterprises at the beginning (Creative Palm and Ribele - both for arts and crafts), and also three social enterprises offering social services to people with disabilities (Day Care Centre Poraka Nova, ILETE Poraka Nova and NEGA Poraka Nova - all of them explained in program 1).
Poraka Nova is a partner organization in the social enterprise Lice v lice, through which we succeeded to employ one person with Down Syndrome as a vendor of the street magazine, who is the first officially employed vendor in Macedonia).
We have developed business plans for three potential social enterprises: one, for offering products and services for accessible tourism; two, for waste treatment and recycling and promotion of circular economy; three, for nonprofit marketing, offering services to nonprofit organizations to take use of the digital and affiliate marketing.
Poraka Nova in collaboration with organizations from Italy, Spain and Croatia, developed the Social Innovation Network - SINet, which is a platform for digital social innovation, where the nonprofits can learn how to use social innovations, marketing and digitalization in order to become self-sustainable.
We continuously work on training people with disabilities, and vulnerable groups in general, on how to initiate their own social businesses and become self-employed and take use of the business skills they attain.
In the following period we are planning to make use of artificial intelligence, blockchain and other new technological advantages, in service of the people with disabilities and their needs.
We are leading the mPreneuer Social Mobile Entrepreneurship Project. mPreneur stimulates capacity building of young aspiring entrepreneurs and youth CSOs for usage of apps coding and ICT as vital skills for youth employability as well as for strengthening community resilience. Youth develop sustainable innovative business mobile solutions to the persisting community challenges. Social mobile entrepreneurship is recognized as a special concept uniting the purpose-driven component of the businesses and the mobile technology used. mPreneur does not only stimulates skills sharing among youngsters, but strengthens the quality of youth work by building CSOs capacities for digital learning and usage of ICT for youth empowerment and employability, while gamifying the process through mobile app business competitions. mPreneur follows the major achievements of the first and the second editions of our mYouth CBY project. Exactly this potential to help youth choose their career path in entrepreneurship, while embracing new technologies and being socially aware, and on a different note, to benefit from mobile learning therewith becoming engaged and resilient and ready to embrace change, inspired us to deepen its content and provide solid foundation for sustainability of the project results after the project end.
9. YOUTH AND VOLUNTEERING.
Inevitable part of the work of Poraka Nova is involvement of young people, volunteers and interns. We have numerous activities and projects for promotion of youth information, volunteering, youth exchanges and mobilities. Namely, Poraka Nova is a member of ERYICA - European Youth Information and Counselling Agency, through which we promote the importance of youth having equal access to quality and free information as a prerequisite for them to make use of their rights, to make responsible decisions and to participate in society in its social, economic and political dimensions. This is why the right to information is widely recognized in major legal and political documents at national, European and International level, and this is the role that Youth Information plays across Europe. Poraka Nova leads the youth information portal mladiinfo.eu.
We currently implement four youth projects, NEUEYT, mPreneur, YInfoPeers and YInfoPioneers.