SG-REP: Sec-Gen Report 2025-26

The report covers the period from April 2025 to March 2026, i.e. the second year
of the Sec-Gen’s term.

Employment Conditions and Infrastructure

The working conditions remain decent. The salaries in the Office went up 50 EUR
in November 2025, amounting to EUR 1,350 for Sec-Gen (EUR 1,400 for next term)
and 1.300 for other full-time positions. The increase was planned (in the
financial plan) since January 2026, but savings were allowed to be implemented
earlier. The increase is due to the inflation and tax raises in Serbia, still
being around the average gross salary in Serbia (1,308 EUR in December 2025).
Additional raises or employing a new person would require receiving an
additional grant.

In addition, the EC decided to grant an office year-end reward of 450 EUR per
person. The EC decision states: In years where there is a profit compared to the
financial plan, the Office may be awarded a year-end reward of up to 20% of the
additional profit to be divided among personnel, which makes the reward clearly
defined and predictable.

The only significant change in the infrastructure is that, due to the savings in
2025 and the transfer periods incoming, we bought new computers for the office.

The adopted Office Guidelines show the total amount of overtime, which stayed at
the same level (around 120 in total for all Office personnel) despite the two
additional projects organised.

Internship programme

The Project&Communication Intern started working in September and works until
the GA is finished. The internship is remote, with participation in the Study
Session and EC Meetings, totalling 17.5 hours per week, with a salary of 550
EUR. The main tasks and learning outcomes were defined in the activity report.
The intern was supervised by the Secretary-General.

The internship brought improvement in the quality of the communication,
especially from the events, and the coherence. Thus, it was proven that it is a
good idea to have another position responsible for comms, even if part-time, or
just for a specific campaign period. Project-wise, Sintija contributed to the
FemAT Local Action as well as took some responsibilities from the Office in
reporting (though it was limited due to some funders changing deadlines).
Generally, the programme and intern’s work has a big advantage for CDN.

As it was the first CDN internship in years, the planning was quite chaotic. The
internship plan was proven to be insufficient and needed to be adjusted during
the internship (also due to the changes in deadlines of some
applications/reports compared to the last year). This negatively affected the
learning process, but hopefully will not affect satisfaction with the
internship. It is recommended for the future to organise the internship
programmes, not necessarily every year, but depending on the needs and
capacities, to provide a good plan with learning outcomes.

It would be good to monitor somehow the situation of former interns, to check if
the knowledge gained during the internship benefits CDN or its MOs. It would be
fantastic if every intern applied for other positions, or EC, or Prep-Teams in
the coming years, but there are many circumstances that make it unpredictable.
The introduction of an alumni network might help in that as well.

Office Retreat and Internal Training

Office retreat was organised to create the transfer documents and team-build
before the in-live activities in 2025, with that realising it aims. The
documents were created, and the transfer will be much more straightforward.

We did not organise any internal training for Office, unfortunately. The Office
retreat was prioritised, as well as additional activities in Q2-Q4. Finally,
Office personnel also did not attend any in-person external training (one was
supposed to go, but withdraw due to the sickness) due to the combination of lack
of time and over-experience for some offered workshops.

New Office members will be encouraged to attend some external training,
especially for the first year. Some two-days internal training plus team-
building outside of Belgrade was proven to be a good practice as well, maybe
with the use of some online tools, and invitation of some external expert at the
later stage if needed.

Strategy Monitoring

We have met our strategic objectives in 92,11% (I goal: 100%, II goal: 94,31%,
III goal: 82%), which is increase of 11 p.p. comparing to 2024 (KPI monitoring
sheet is available via request, cannot be published on the platform). We are
succeeding in the educational events, and improved compared to 2025 in
transforming them into outputs (increased number of publications). The goal 3:
Bringing Eastern European perspective remains weaker and harder to measure: we
increased the traffic on website or social media engagement, but it might be
derivative of increased engagement in educational activities etc.

At ECM2, steps were taken to improve the strategy itself and its monitoring.
KPIs were modified to measure the outreach and engagement of our external
communication, instead of just its individual forms (which, like Opinion Pieces
introduced last year, proved uninteresting and unengaging). At the same time, an
amendment to the strategy was proposed, defining the forms of communication and
their message, to avoid engagement farming (which in political movements is
usually negative and reactive messaging) simply to achieve KPIs. CDN is
committed to achieving engagement, but in a manner consistent with our
engagement ladder.

Contact with EC

The contact between Office and EC improved comparing to the last year. The daily
decision-making is quick on regular bi-weekly meetings, while the strategic
decision are focus of the live meetings.

The activity and responsiveness of all EC Members increased the productivity of
the network as a whole, also decreasing the amount of work put on the office. In
previous term (2024/25), the reshuffling of work, waiting for the input of two
inactive EC Members and forcing Office to make strategic decisions not in this
role meant a lot wasted time for Sec-Gen, as well as other, active EC Member. In
the 2025/26 term, this was freed up. Thus, the organisation of two additional
events (Environmental Consequences of War and Training for Trainers) was
possible thanks to EC being active and taking their work seriously.

While the EC task division was equal at the beginning, some people took
additional projects not defined at the beginning, that could lead to inequal
task division and overwork. There was reshuffling of tasks during live EC
Meetings to mitigate this risk, but maybe the check-in mechanism from the Office
should be implemented to monitor.

Fundraising

Due to the increase of Green Forum funding, we could fit the sensitive gaps in
our previous years‘ budgets such as co-funding for work plan and salaries, and
rather apply for grants based on our strategic priorities rather than to adjust
our priorities to the grant. This also meant that we did not have to look for
the additional co-funding of work plan, that previously required a lot of
additional work from the office that was freed-up this year.

We applied for additional grant (rejected), as well as created the concept of
additional programme Taste the Change: Youth Shaping Sustainable Food
Transitions in Municipalities that was not send due to posponing the call for
projects and can be used next year with some funder.

We need more work put in the small scale fundraising. We received only 20 EUR in
small-scale donations. We also need to pay attention in the changes in the donor
lanscape. The cuts in USAID did not concern us directly, as we have not applied
for any such grant; however, it means that some organisations previously funded
by USAID were applying for other grants. This means bigger competition for the
usual grants we were receiving or applying for. Due to that, we need to put more
focus on the applications for this funder; however, it is difficult because of a
lack of any feedback on applications from their side (they either accept or do
not). We will definitely need to pay more attention to CoE Youth Sector
priorities while planning activities.

Relations with Other Organisations

We continued good, and on-time communication with FYEG, sharing calendars and
doing some statement co-operation. We participated in the meeting with
Foundation Max van der Stoel (PvdA foundation, Netherlands) to get to know each
other and put stones towards potential cooperationa after GL-PvdA merger. We
were also again represented at EGP Congress, with no significant updates.

We stay in contact with other youth international NGOs, either via EYF events,
or participation in some events. This needs to be continued, but in order to
increase our position, we need to make steps towards joining European Youth
Forum. For this we need to increase the membership base, especially in our most
active MOs – thus, maybe they should be strategically prioritised over next 1-2
years.

Next steps and recommendations for next Sec-Gen

Finishing my mandate, I believe the plans and strategy for next year are well-
defined. A crucial thing will be to ensure the sustainable transfer of positions
and continuation of work, merging the current strategy with the vision of the
new Secretary-General. My recommendations for the next Sec-Gen, Office and EC
that were not put into other documents include:

Moreover, repeating the point from last year, I strongly suggest rethinking the
role and format of the General Assembly. The GA’s added value is low compared to
the capacity-building events considering the amount of money and office capacity
it takes, and, however necessary, can be shortened or be smaller, or even
organised online, sometimes, eg, every second year. With new IRPs that shorten
bureaucracy and implement changes increasing the roles of MOs in-between GAs,
and a new form of political conference that has already tried this year, we
might increase the added value of GA, so the next year I will be proven wrong.

Hence, I leave the Office with CDN on a stable organisational basis, clear
strategic direction and strong human potential. CDN proven The organisation has
proven its resilience, adaptability and relevance in a rapidly changing regional
context, and this is an asset to be further strengthened. Our strength is in
trust-based cooperation, flexibility and critically implemented Green and
progressive values. We can work beyond the standard NGO practices, innovate
faster than the systems we operate with, make some avant-garde, experimental
forms of communication, organisational or event formats, or decision-making, as
long as they remain transparent, accountable and politically meaningful. Well,
life itself is sometimes an avant-garde experience.