Presidency Fund: Results of the Third Call for Proposals

The Third Call for Proposals issued by the Presidency Fund came to a close on 21 February 2007. As a result of the call 44 applications were submitted to the Preliminary Phase of which 22 were invited to participate in the Main Phase of the Call. Unfortunately two organisations did not submit a Main application and so, 20 project proposals were assessed by the Presidency Fund Board. It must be said that the quality of the proposals submitted to the Preliminary and the Main Phase were of a quality that surpassed the previous two calls and the Board members deliberated much before selecting six proposals.

To begin with, the National Platform of Maltese NGDOs was selected with its proposal to build up its capacity and that of its members to participate more actively in the debate on the EU Development Policy. This project would also help build up the Secretariat to ensure the long term sustainability of the Platform.With the upcoming Presidency of Slovenia and its focus on climate change, the project submitted by Focus Association for Sustainable Development with their project to link the issues of climate change with the general debate on development cooperation was also an obvious choice for the Board. The project submitted by the Environment Management & Law Association- EMLA was also selected for its interesting focus on environmental governance in the global south and the implementation of the project which would involve NGDOs from five of the EU-10 countries. A Latvian NGDO was also awarded aid in a project applying the principles of the global movement Social Watch to the EU-10. Lastly, the Network of East-West Women was awarded aid again to continue the project "Gender Watch" in order to expand the activities of the Gender Watch Network to focus on aid monitoring at the EU level especially with respect to development cooperation with the CEE/CIS countries. With aid received in the first Call for Proposals, NEWW set up the Gender Watch. The Hungarian National Platform, HAND, was also selected for its proposal to build up its capacity to focus on aid-monitoring.

To read summaries of each of these Projects, you can follow this link http://www.presidencyfund.org/wcm/content/category/24/349/129/

Information sent by Samantha Saldanha, Presidency Fund