How everyday acts of mutual support can form the real infrastructure of civic life

Below is the contribution of Marko Aksentijević, Ministry of Space (Serbia) to the online session “Building the New: Reimagining Civil Society Resourcing in Times of Global Transformation”, held on 30 October 2025. Serbia’s recent youth-led uprising has revealed both the limits of donor-driven systems and the strength of everyday solidarity. Marko describes how trust, solidarity and self-organizing are offering a new paradigm for the future of Serbian civil society.

You can read the full report / transcript of the session here, or the individual contributions from the other three speakers: Nour Nusseibeh, Dalia Association (Palestine); Martin Macwan, Navsarjan (India); and, Kamala Chandrakirana, Indonesia for Humanity (Indonesia).

Jenny Hodgson, GFCF (JH): Marko, would you like to tell us a little bit about your story and how you’re seeing the world right now, from where you sit? Obviously, Serbia is going through its own Gen Z moment. Over the last year, following the collapse of the canopy at a railway station in Novi Sad, students and young people have maintained consistent protests in ways that have been very impressive. Can you talk about this idea of “the moment for reimagining and reflection”, and also share a little bit about the Ministry of Space?

Marko Aksentijević (MA): Thank you, Jenny, for including me in this conversation. This whole discussion is very relevant for us right now: we are facing a multi-layered crisis. We struggle both with the availability of funding to sustain the work of the organization and broader civil society and, at the same time, also with the larger question of whether this whole approach has been meaningful and productive for society. In Serbia, civil society was largely built in the 1990s, with the support of Western governments to help topple the autocratic regime of Milošević. Yet, 25 years later, we find ourselves with another autocrat in power. Not only has the international backing of democratic reform failed, but today it is also not organized civil society that stands as the pillar of the resistance — it’s the student movement, leaderless and very effective. This must make one question the whole development paradigm and everything we have been doing, and echoes with what Nour has just said.

We too were often guided by the idea that institutions can be reformed with advocacy efforts, an idea that was at the heart of the money that we were receiving. The Ministry of Space belongs to the second generation of organizations that were made to be different, more connected to the constituency than the organizations that were active for 25 years. We focused on making local groups achieve institutional success in the realm of spatial development in the easiest possible way. But we also fell into the traps of institution driven indicators and policy change, rather than working with our communities and building the kind of power that will ultimately be the guardrails of democracy once the institutions start to crumble, which is what we are experiencing now. When you look at all the work that went into trying to improve institutions and you see the current state of affairs, you must wonder what went wrong.

What has proved to be worthwhile and is now paying off in this time of crisis are things like physical infrastructure — the physical spaces such as the independent social and cultural centres that are now serving as hubs for organizing during this mass mobilization. For our organization, it turns out that our most meaningful work has not been around urban development critique and advocacy, but rather organizing and spreading this culture of neighbourhood assemblies, coming together in times of crisis and talking about what matters. For us, it began as the way of mobilizing around spatial development in a neighbourhood, but now it is country-wide infrastructure that supports the student movement and develops a much-needed culture of dialogue.

For years there has always been this idea that we had to get funding from abroad, because there is no “culture of giving” in Serbia. But these protests have sparked the “culture of giving” in unprecedented ways — people give when there is a sense of meaning. In fact, at times the student movement has had to ask people to stop donating because they cannot process all of the contributions. Some of the most powerful and remarkable images of the mobilization for the past year have been of students making these long marches from one city to another, and people offering them food and shelter, or just a couple of apples because that is what they have to give. This might not be “resource mobilization” in the most technical sense, but it represents exactly the kind of civil society we need and want to reimagine.

“I hope that there is no return of the development aid system as it was, because in many ways it derailed genuine democratic processes…Instead, we really need to rebuild from the resources that are in our communities. And there are indeed enough resources.”

So, we are now deeply rethinking what our role should be and how it should be dramatically reconsidered in a way that can bring more meaningful change. I hope that there is no return of the development aid system as it was, because in many ways it derailed genuine democratic processes, at least in terms of countries on the periphery like Serbia. Instead, we really need to rebuild from the resources that are in our communities. And there are indeed enough resources.

JH: Thank you, Marko. You are describing how in Serbia, young people have actually been bypassing large parts of the traditional civil society infrastructure, which has perhaps historically had its eye on the wrong prize (ie. funding policy shifts, rather than community energy and participation). You have also challenged what we at the GFCF have long been told — that local resources “don’t really matter”, that they are small, marginal, something to think about later. But when young people walk across the country and villagers hand them three apples because that is what they have to give, that is the work. It forces us to ask: what have we been measuring, if this kind of solidarity itself somehow doesn’t “count”?

What you’ve shared reminds us too of the power of physical spaces — the places where people can come together, organize, and simply be in community with each other. That feels absolutely critical right now. And it invites us to question so much of what we have inherited: civil society in Serbia was built at a particular moment, under a particular global political project. As we mourn the loss of systems that are fading, we also need to ask — were those structures ever truly the right ones? Your point around if aid comes back, let it not come back like before, is incredibly important. We should be thinking about how we prepare and ensure that whatever comes back is substantially different. Thank you for that.

MA: For me the foremost question is: how do we take time to step back and reflect on what happened? One of the things that always kept us from doing this reflective work has been that there is always a crisis. There is always a lot happening in city development — a lot of individual problems and incidents, with communities all over the city gathering around them to protest and engage in whatever is necessary. So, we are basically firefighters going around fighting all these fires. I think our original idea was that, if we do this often enough, things will change systematically, institutions will act differently in the next instance.

But, actually, when there is controversial development, we see perhaps only one in five communities respond and, of those, perhaps only one in five are successful in bringing about change. So, at the end of the day, even when we are winning occasionally, we are effectively losing a lot of space. This makes it more essential than ever to rethink. In the current environment in which there is limited funding, protecting your organization becomes your instinct, you know: “Where do we get more juice, more funding?” We rarely sit back and reflect on the bigger picture, on whether our work is having a meaningful impact in the long-term and, if not, why.

Everyone often focuses only on their individual organizations, but we need to start thinking as an ecosystem of organizations.

Everyone often focuses only on their individual organizations, but we need to start thinking as an ecosystem of organizations. At the end of the day, when the grants stop coming, in the current system it’s every organization for themselves, scrambling for resources, even starting businesses to sustain their work. I just don’t think that we can function like that. The question is: are we ready to think about new models and structures? One example that might be inspiring is to consider the idea of big cooperatives that have an ecosystem, from political education, to generating income and supporting the work that all of our organizations currently do. I believe that this is the kind of thinking that we need to do.

Thank you for opening this conversation. It already helped me to take a step back which is much needed and especially to think about this as a beginning, rather than something that we have to do to survive.

JH: Thank you, Marko. As you said, we are all so busy firefighting that we rarely get the time or resources to step back and think about larger systems and what some of the alternatives might look like. Not only are those reflective spaces hard to find or to carve out, but there also tend to be few resources available to help invest in those ideas. Even in this short conversation, across four countries, we can already see the threads emerging that connect both the struggles and the innovations. The challenge for all of us is how we can work to strengthen the “connective tissue” that binds us together, to build the trellis that allows these ideas, behaviours, and new norms to weave in and out and to grow together. Right now, we remain isolated drops in very large buckets — and we are losing. We need to shift from firefighting alone to creating the spaces that help us see, align, and move as a collective.

The Ministry of Space is an independent activist collective based in Belgrade, Serbia. It was founded in 2011 to promote democratic urban development, spatial justice, and citizen participation in urban planning. It is not a government ministry but an NGO that advocates for public interest over private development, focusing on housing, the green transition, and activating unused spaces.

Read the full report / transcript of the session, or the individual contributions from the other three speakers:

• Nour Nusseibeh, Dalia Association (Palestine)
• Martin Macwan, Navsarjan (India)
• Kamala Chandrakirana, Indonesia for Humanity (Indonesia)