In 2013, the Healthy Cities of the Czech Republic that unite municipalities of all sizes, sub-regions, regions as well as local action groups, extended to the current 115 members. The upcoming twentieth year of Association's activity in the Czech Republic brought entry of important strategic or active members and confirmed the trend of growth in the Czech Republic. The following new members extended the ranks of HCCZ in 2013: Capital City of Prague, Moravian-Silesian Region, statutory town Liberec, towns of Znojmo and Slapanice, city district Prague 20, Veznice town and four local action groups: Blansky les - Netolicko, Opavsko, Rozkvet zahrady jiznich Cech and Vodnanska ryba. We welcome all new members cordially in the Healthy Cities of the Czech Republic and wish them many successes in all activities related to association membership.

In 2013, HCCZ members also won a number of awards for successes in various areas of development. The Healthy City of Jihlava successfully represented in the finals of the LivCom Awards (The International Awards for Liveable Communities) which concentrates on best practice in the area of improving quality of life for inhabitants of the cities of all sizes. The finals took place at the turn of November and December in Xiamen, China. The Healthy City of Jihlava won the Silver Prize in the main competition with the category of cities with 20 to 75 thousand inhabitants and Bronze Prize for fulfilment of sustainable development criteria with the project of Housing Estate Revitalisation in Jihlava Area – Kralovsky vrsek.

In this year of competition Routes in Cities, focused on traffic calming, the towns of Telc and Mseno also succeeded. In this competition organised by Partnership Foundation, Telc won the first prize in the category of local solutions with its new transportation terminal project. The project of revitalising urban core in Mseno was awarded with Special Prize by the magazine Modern Municipality.

The Healthy City of Hodonin has reached the title of Fairtrade City in 2013 and thus joined other CZ cities that support and promote "fair trade" with producers of goods from the Third World countries. The holders of Fairtrade City title already include the Healthy Cities of Litomerice and Vsetin, other HCCZ members belong among the applicants preparing for this title.

The awards of successful local administrations formed a traditional part of the programme of National Conference on Quality in Public Administration. Within the awarding of Ministry of Interior Prizes for Quality and Innovation the implementation of Local Agenda 21 (LA21) method, i.e. practical application of sustainable development principles was acknowledged again. The Silver Prize (Organisation of good public services) for quality in public administration for the realisation of LA21 was awarded to the Healthy Cities of Chrudim, Koprivnice, Litomerice, Prostejov which also won the Gold Prize for the application of CAF methodology. Silver prize for other methods of quality in public administration was awarded to the Healthy City Chrudim (EMAS). The Bronze Prize (Organisation increasing the quality of public service) for application of LA21 was received by the representatives of the Healthy Cities Hlucin, Prachatice, Uherske Hradiste, Valasske Mezirici, Healthy City Districts of Prague Libus and Prague 21. Bronze prize for other methods of quality in public administration was received by the representatives of Healthy Cities of Jilemnice (EMAS), Strakonice (benchmarking/benchlearning) and Healthy South-Moravian Region (ISO/IEC 27001:2005). The prize for innovation in public administration in 2012 was awarded to the Healthy Cities of Prachatice (e-Utility report), Strakonice (Joint grant of the town of Strakonice and Community Foundation Blanicko – Otavske), Healthy South-Moravian Region (Anti-corruption policy of South-Moravian Region – activities of South-Moravian Region in the field of fight against corruption ) and Healthy Pilsen Region (Centralisation of ICT services providing for the established organisations within the self-governing territorial unit).

We would like to congratulate all the awarded parties and wish them as well as other cities, municipalities and regions successes in the following year.

Healthy City Public Forum is a meeting attended not only by the local inhabitants and local administration representatives, but also by the representatives of local non-profit organisations, schools and other external experts. The forum offers inspiration to interested parties from municipalities. The participants of Healthy City Public Forum define the main problems in a given municipality and vote to determine top ten problems that are consequently verified in a poll, involving a wider circle of citizens. The participants of the event also find out more about how their problems raised at the meeting held on the previous year had been dealt with. In 2013, more than 35 such forums took place in the Czech municipalities, with participation of more than 2800 people.

List of dates and locations is available on the website www.ZdravaMesta.cz/forum. The website also contains information about top ten problems raised at the previous meeting in a given location, related strategic documents, contact data as well as invitations to events. All information to Healthy City Public Forum is thus available in one location.

You can follow activites in Healthy Cities and their best practice through many information channels Information about individual Healthy Cities is available directly in the profiles, available either from the website www.ZdravaMesta.cz/clenove. In addition to basic overview of activities related with Healthy City operation, these profiles newly also contain e.g. webcam views directly on site.

The internet database at the address of Healthy Cities of the Czech Republic www.DobraPraxe.cz (partly translated on good-practice.eu/en/) already contains 230 inspiring examples from various areas of development of cities, municipalities and regions. In the database you can find examples from the fields such as living environment, health, transportation, social services, free time, but also volunteer activities and others. The database also includes brief inspirations – short clear examples of what has proven successful in practice and what may inspire others. You will find them directly on home page or at dobrapraxe.cz/cz/priklady-dobre-praxe. These inspirations and also more detailed good practice examples are regularly distributed to all interested parties.

In addition to portal for strategic management of cities and municipalities titled DataPlan, Healthy Cities of the Czech Republic also operate a national Database of Strategies under the support and in cooperation with Ministry of Regional Development and other departments. The database connects strategic objectives, measures and other input parameters spanning from international level to documents of ministries and national institutions, to regional and local levels.

In the recent years, Healthy Cities have been also using short videos for their presentation, whether as attractive invitations to events or brief and well-arranged coverage of the municipal affairs. On the website www.ZdravaMesta.cz/video you can find a video-gallery with contributions that describe in audio and video what the notion of Healthy Municipality, City and Region stands for in practice.

The above mentioned video channel is an opportunity to further promote activities and inspire others. Considerable success is also achieved in the Czech Republic and abroad by the presentation of Healthy Cities on Facebook, which is already "liked" by more than 9,500 visitors. Join us too.

In the last months ended a two-year project of Healthy Cities of the Czech Republic Association titled "Quality and Efficient Strategic Management in Municipalities". Owing to support from the European Social Fund and Operational Programme of Human Resources and Employment, hundreds of representatives of municipal, town or regional offices across Czech Republic could be trained. Both small municipalities and large cities received targeted consultations and advisory services focused on how to plan and manage their development well. Several IT tools available online have been prepared to facilitate the cities' work with their strategies or budgets.

A number of training and educational events was prepared within the project. Officers and politicians attended courses lasting for several days and learnt how to prepare and evaluate their strategic plan, how to communicate and plan with the public and publicize their activities. They also shared their inspirations as well as problems from practice at thematic sections, seminars and conferences. More than 500 participants thus participated in the two-year project. Project activities further focused in particular on specific targeted advisory services, coaching and individual assistance in the given municipalities and regions. Throughout the project, two regional advisors consulted the problems with representatives of cities, assisted facilitation of negotiating with the public, coached strategic teams and were of help to all enquiries related with sustainable development of a particular location. The consultation focused in particular on the method of quality local Agenda 21 (LA21). Also owing to the project we managed to increase the number of quality realisers of this method and also prepare conditions and procedures to achieve that the very first town – Chrudim – reached the highest level and received the highest category "A" of local Agenda 21. This advisory and coaching service was one of the most appreciated and was repeatedly used by more than one hundred municipalities and regions. Financial means gained from the project also enabled preparation of municipalities for a number of information tools, available publicly at the web portal of DataPlan.info, or internal tools for municipal officers and politicians with access under individual user name and password. These modules (online tools) will further serve municipalities for the preparation and evaluation of their strategic materials or budgets, municipalities will be able to benchmark their results owing to special indicator module and will be able to search effectively and evaluate relevant information classified by individual regions (so called regional info-portals). Description of the created modules as well as other outputs can be found on the project website www.ZdravaMesta.cz/strateg. Other project activities also included searching and collection of so called best practices – approved procedures of municipalities in the very area of strategic management. These and many other examples are available at www.dobrapraxe.cz/cz/tema/strategicke-rizeni. One of the highly appreciated project outputs was a publication on the subject of best practice and inspiration in the field of strategic planning and management in municipalities that serves as methodical guidance for implementation of these processes. The publication is freely available at: www.ZdravaMesta.cz/strategicke-rizeni-publikace.

The project of "Strategic Management in Communities - Quality and Effective" was received with great interest and brought a number of useful results and outputs. HCCZ will further follow-up with this project.