Official Development Assistance in the Visegrad Group Countries

Information provided by Marta Pejda, Polish NGDO platform "Grupa Zagranica"

The Zagranica Group - Polish NGOs Abroad organised a meeting on building the Official Development Assistance in the Visegrad Group Countries (V4: Hungary, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic, Poland). It was held on April 18-19, 2007 in Krakow, Poland. Actually, it was not for the V4 only, as – due to support from the National Endowment for Democracy – also participants from Bulgaria and Romania joint the group, while TRIALOG made possible the participation of a Slovenian representative.

This seminar to some extent was a continuation of the Bratislava conference that was organised by MVRO, the Slovak NGDO platform, within the Regional Partnership Programme in December 2006. The Polish project consists of two seminars and has been financed by the East-East Programme – the second meeting is to happen in Warsaw and is designed for both the non-governmental and governmental sectors.

The April Krakow session was focused on criteria and procedures of calls for proposals for NGOs organised by ministries and development agencies. The participants – a small group of representatives of the National Platforms and their member NGOs – described the details of ODA calls for proposals in their countries and worked out a set of recommendations. Short time at the end of the session was taken off for discussing the Warsaw seminar programme to be organised in late June.

Organised by the Zagranica Group (the Polish NGDO platform), the meeting took place in the premises of a platform member, the Salesian Missionary Voluntary Service “Youth for the World”. Participants visited a new open-air project, an African Village, as well as listened to the organisation workers about their projects on development education and awareness raising programmes.