Siksali Development Centre is regional non-profit organisation in South-Eastern Estonia mainly working in the fields of informal and non-formal education, environmental awareness raising and rural development. The Centre is situated in the border area, close to Latvia and Russia, on the edge of Haanja Nature Park, which provides a great natural resource for ecotourism development. This is one of the most underdeveloped parts of the country, with biggest unemployment and lowest salaries. The population is constantly decreasing, many people are moving to bigger towns or abroad. The Centre was established in 2002, in order to help rural people to find new ideas for alternative economic activities in the countryside. Thus our main target group is rural population, incl unemployed, at risk of social and economical exclusion due to their peripheral location and difficult socio-economical status. We are constantly searching for ways how to improve their life, find new job creation possibilties, activating rural areas etc.
For ca 15 years, we have been working with more than 20 EU funded projects in the field of rural development. This includes, for example, working with the rural tourism sector (which often combines both, small-scale family-based agriculture and food sectors). Regarding working with unemployed people + entrepreneurship, we were involved in a Joint Action project PROACT and Grundtvig 1 project CAERA, which were for activacting rural unemployed women to set up their own enterprise. Unemployed persons have been an important target group of many of our LdV ToI projects as well.
We have gained also experience in working with many social sector projects (different socially disadvataged groups, including mentally disabled people) as well as youth projects.
Expertise, experience and responsibilities in relation to EU project management and implementation
In total, we have completed more than 100 projects (international, national, regional, local) with SDC being the partner or co-ordinator.
We have had ca 15 years of cooperation with other European countries and organisations thanks to Leonardo da Vinci and Grundtvig programme, Swedish Institute, Nordic Council of Ministers etc, not to mention the numerous Estonian national programmes. We have hosted tens of mobility projects from all over Europe. SDC was appointed the official co-operation partner of Estonian Environmental Investment Centre and co-ordinated Environmental Awaress Programme in Võru county from 2003-2009 (de-centralisation period of the programme, where we performed the sub-national level duties of the programme Managing Authority – starting with appointing the project evaluation committee up to announcing regional calls for projects, collection of project applications, performing the evaluation and checking the reporting before submission to the national level for payments).
Kaidi-Mari Liping, the Manager of the organisation, will be the main contact person for projec negotiations. Holding curretnly the position as the manager of Siksali Development Centre, she has has had 6 years working experience with Estonian Rural Tourism Organisation (ERTO) – being responsible for co-operation projects and foreign relations (writing project applications and managing projects in rural tourism). From 2006 until today, K-M Liping has held the position of Chairwoman/Manager of a LEADER programme local action group Borderlands Leader. She is used by Estonian National Agencies (including the one dealing with ERASMUS+ programme) as an expert evaluating project proposals. Since the foundation of Siksali Development Centre, K-M Liping has responsible for the general management of the organisation as well as performing specific tasks depending on the project (training, evaluation, dissemination etc).
