September 8-9, 2009: TRIALOG Future Factory

The EC co-financing for TRIALOG IV (Sept. 09 – Sept. 12) has been recently approved (see related article in this TIS). Therefore, we would like to invite our key-stakeholders (new EU member states platform directors/coordinators, board representatives, Advisory Group) to participate in the TRIALOG “future factory” which will take place on September 8-9, 2009 in Vienna.

In the beginning of the event, we will present the project frame, which is the outcome of a one-year planning process with the TRIALOG Advisory Group and was now selected by the EC for further funding. As a next step, we would like to vitalize this framework and invite our stakeholders to bring in their input, wishes, comments, ideas and visions. This is also the opportunity to find out about other regional or bilateral projects and programmes and how to link them with TRIALOG in order to reach best synergies. We are inviting all platform coordinators/directors and one board representative of each new member state platform, as well as the TRIALOG Advisory Group to this collective workshop.

The draft agenda, further details and preparation documents will be sent to NMS platforms and the Advisory Group during summer. We will report about the outcomes of the Future Factory in the next TIS.

Foto: TRIALOG Central Training 2009

Information provided by Christine Bedoya, TRIALOG

TRIALOG IV approved

TRIALOG is almost at the end of it’s third project phase and we are happy to inform you that the European Commission recently approved the co-funding of the next phase within the Coordination and Networking budget of the Non-State Actors and Local Authorities (NSA-LA) programme. TRIALOG IV will start on September 23, 2009, with a project duration of 3 years.

The approval process was different from how it used to be before - for the first time, TRIALOG was pushed to compete with others and to apply within the call for proposals procedure. Since the first financing for TRIALOG in 1998, TRIALOG has always received direct granting as a so-called "targeted project" due to its de-facto monopoly (like CONCORD, DEEEP and the presidency projects). This time, the EC decided that we can’t prove this de-facto monopoly any more as now not only NGOs, but also other NSA are eligible in the NSA/LA programme.

This reasoning is questioned by TRIALOG and our partners. Especially our stakeholders from the 12 new EU member states initiated an intensive lobby action in support of TRIALOG towards their national representatives in the DCI (Development Cooperation Instrument) member state committee. The DCI committee in its meeting rejected to approve the Annual Action Plan (AAP) from the EC on the NSA/LA programme and 11 Member States sent a joint statement to the EC asking for further direct financing for TRIALOG (and DEEEP) as there is still an urgent need for TRIALOG's engagement.

In a letter to the Commissioners Louis Michel and Benita Ferrero-Waldner and the Directors-General Stefano Manservisi and Koos Richelle, Josep Borrell, Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development expressed his concern about the EC’s intention to stop the direct granting to TRIALOG (and DEEEP). He mentioned that “TRIALOG and DEEEP projects have received universal praise for their quality and usefulness. They are also unique projects, in the sense that they are highly specialised and targeted, and … have built up a unique expertise”.

Despite this overall support, the EC insisted on not including us as a "targeted project" in part II of the AAP, and we had to go through the call for proposals procedure. This was the reason for the European Parliament not to approve part II of the AAP and to adopt a resolution that requests from the EC to clarify the criteria for a “de-facto monopoly” which in their opinion still exists for TRIALOG and DEEEP. It’s now up to the EC to draft a new part II of the AAP and present it for approval again.

For TRIALOG the process turned out to be a success story because we experienced such a huge amount of support from our partners and their national governments in the new EU member states but also from several old member states, the European Parliament and CONCORD. We would like to thank all of you for your support and see it as a mandate to continue our TRIALOG work with full energy.

Information provided by Christine Bedoya, TRIALOG

Information on open reimbursements and summer break

We would like to inform you that the TRIALOG office in Vienna is closed from August 13 - 31, 2009 and the Brussels office from August 6 - 25, 2009.

Please note that in July and August, travel expense claims will only be reimbursed every second week till August 7, 2009 and then again from September onwards weekly. Please be aware to post us all reimbursements for the current project phase of TRIALOG III until August 31, 2009 (exceptions are events in September 2009). As the project ends in September we can not process any claims afterwards. Thank you for your understanding.

Information provided by Brigitte Quehenberger, TRIALOG

The world stretches beyond Europe: Swedish challenges during the EU presidency 2009

Sweden took over the EU presidency from the Czech Republic on 1 July 2009.

The Swedish platform of CONCORD, CONCORD Sweden, will focus on four priority areas during the presidency period. Policy coherence for development (PCD) is the overarching issue and aid effectiveness, climate & development and democracy & human rights will be spotlighted during the presidency. The CONCORD process of the Spotlight on Coherence Report will be a vital contribution to our input on the PCD agenda and the seminar linked to the European Development days in October. There will also be a parliamentary hearing in Sweden on the report and other activities to follow.

Aid effectiveness will be highlighted during the political week in Sweden in June/July when the presidency project is also launched and the board of CONCORD Europe is represented in the panel on a seminar on European aid in a time of crises. The Aid Watch report and the content of it will be in focus for several seminars during the presidency period, one example is during the International Book Fair in September when CONCORD Sweden will organize several events.

Climate and development will be on top of the agenda during the presidency and the UNFCCC meeting (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Copenhagen will be one of the most important high level meetings during the period. CONCORD Sweden will organize events on climate change during the European Development Days, and the Human Rights Days in November for example.

The Democracy and Human rights aspect of development aid and democracy building in development is on the official agenda and will be highlighted during the European Development Days in October and at the Human Rights Days in November.

Read about the launch of the Swedish presidency project at: http://www.concord.se/page.asp?id=100&lang=EN
Download the Presidency Manifesto from: http://www.concord.se/page.asp?id=297&lang=EN
View the event calendar at: http://www.concord.se/page.asp?id=27&lang=EN
For further information, please visit: http://www.concord.se/
Find the governmental presidency website at: http://www.se2009.eu/

Information provided by Malin Parmander, CONCORD Sverige/Sweden

European Transition Compendium

Work is continuing on the European Transition Compendium, an initiative from DG Development of the European Commission to use the transition experiences of new member states (NMS) to feed into European development policy. A technical seminar in the middle of June united member states representatives, the European Commission and the consultant who will be drafting the compendium.

After a preparatory meeting of NMS platforms at the CONCORD General Assembly TRIALOG policy officer Rebecca Steel took the issues that had been raised to the meeting with the EC and member states. The member states are generally supporting the idea, although it is clear that certain issues remain to be resolved. The questions Rebecca brought up focused on why civil society had not been involved to a great extent so far; why the geographical focus is so broad when transition lessons presumably apply to situations in pre-accession countries rather than developing countries generally and most NMS have clear added value in Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans; and how it would be ensured that NMS’ other areas of contribution to development policy would be tied in and not overshadowed by this transition experience focus.

The consultant, Adolfo Sanchez, will be visiting the NMS capitals over the next few weeks and months. NMS platforms are encouraged to contact their Ministries in order to actively participate in this process and ensure civil society voices are heard.

For more information, please contact Rebecca: trialog@concordeurope.org

Information provided by Rebecca Steel, TRIALOG

FoRS Presidency Conference: Civil Society Organisations Development Effectiveness

The Czech NGDO platform FoRS in close cooperation with the European confederation CONCORD organised an international conference “Civil Society Organisations Development Effectiveness” in Prague on June 23 – 24, 2009, as the final and closing event of the FoRS program and official accompanying event of the Czech EU Presidency.

The conference gathered over 170 representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs), donors and governments from nearly 50 countries from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, Latin and North America. They discussed the key topic – the principles of development effectiveness and the specific role of CSOs in development with respect to the external conditions that best contribute to their full performance.

The program combined different ways of exchange: An overview on the global process of CSO development effectiveness was given in a talk show between members of the Open Forum on CSO Development Effectiveness (http://www.cso-effectiveness.org/). Later, participants split into workshops on different topics: Sustainable Technologies for Sustainable Development, Migration and Development, Inclusive Development, Gender and Development, Democratic Governance and Development, Agriculture and Food Security. The Czech participants shared their experience in these areas with partners from different parts of the world.

The second day was devoted to multi-stakeholders debates – a panel of donors (EC, Czech MFA and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) was moderated by Olivier Consolo from CONCORD. Later, a panel of CSOs was moderated by Johanna Mang from the Austrian Development Agency.

At the end of the event, participants vividly discussed the wording of the final conference statement. Coming from very diverse backgrounds and continents, they agreed on development effectiveness principles which they committed to discuss and explore further within the Open Forum. FoRS was happy to have achieved its rather ambitious goal to contribute to the global CSO efforts in increasing development effectiveness.

Download the conference statement from http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/statement.pdf. Further information and the final conference report will be published on the FoRS web page
http://www.fors.cz/en/eu_presidency/seminars_conferences. Use the same link to download the final report of the May presidency conference on effectiveness in development education.

Information provided by Marie Zázvorková, FoRS

June news from Slovenian development cooperation

In June, Slovenian development cooperation made a step forward; a yearly report on Official Development Assistance was adopted, the last national Call for NGO development projects proposals was evaluated together with the NGOs, and last but not least, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is preparing a new foreign policy strategy in consultation with the NGOs.

Following the 2009 call for proposals for Slovenian NGOs working in Western Balkan Countries, Eastern Europe and Subsaharan countries in March this year, the Slovenian Foreign Ministry organised an evaluation meeting to discuss lessons-learned of this call, as well as to define further steps. In the near future the MFA is planning to upgrade the current mechanism of public calls in terms of establishing special development programmes with the governments of Macedonia and Montenegro (being the geographic priorities of Slovenian development cooperation in the Western Balkan area). Another step forward will be the introduction of a multi-year calls for proposals system. According to the representative of the MFA, the next call will be published already during this summer. The Slovenian NGDO platform SLOGA and its NGO members will be part of the procedure when drafting the conditions of the call.

The Slovenian Government adopted the Report on Slovenian development cooperation and humanitarian aid in 2008. According to the report, Slovenian ODA in 2008 was set at 46,87 million EUR (0,13% of GNI). The majority of bilateral ODA was spent in the priority areas of Western Balkans and Eastern Europe (almost 80% of total bilateral ODA). Least developed countries of Sudsaharan Africa received only 3% of Slovenian ODA in 2008 and the percentage is even lower in comparison to the previous years. SLOGA, in cooperation with the ODA Working Group, is preparing a call to all ministries to raise their ODA as a follow up to the report.

The Slovenian Foreign Ministry started the procedure of drafting a new Strategy of Slovenian Foreign Policy for the period of 2010-2015. A special group of experts, nominated by the Slovenian foreign minister will be responsible for drafting main challenges, objectives and goals of the Slovenian foreign policy in the future. As stated, one of the main priorities is international development cooperation and humanitarian aid. SLOGA is currently working on an input to the strategy, which will be submitted to the MFA.

Information provided by Eva Pliberšek, SLOGA, http://www.sloga-platform.org

Bratislava round table: Floods on the road to Copenhagen

What a paradox! A round table in Bratislava (on June 25-26, 2009) which focused on climate changes and its impacts on developing countries started with unexpected problems with floods. The participants who traveled from Poland and Czech Republic by train were stuck in flooded areas of Central Europe. Fortunately finally they reached Bratislava with some delays.

The round table in Bratislava, organised by the Slovak NGDO Platform MVRO, was part of a project led by Polish CASE (Centre for Social and Economic Research) and British ODI (Overseas Development Institute) with the participation of the NGDO platforms from the Visegrad group (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia).

The primary topics of the Bratislava round table were climate change and its impacts on developing countries. The inputs were presented by different experts: Milan Lapin from Slovak Comenius University, Jan Szczycinski from UNDP and Jiri Jerabek from Czech Centre for Transport and Energy. The provided information and arguments around climate changes and its impacts enabled participants from NGOs to develop further ideas how to strengthen their advocacy work before and after the UN conference on climate change which will take place in Copenhagen in December 2009. The second part of the round table was led by Nick Scott from ODI and focused on using online communication tools (emails, websites, blogs, etc.) in order to improve the capacities of NGOs in the area of public campaigning.

The Bratislava round table was the fourth one in a series of round tables (in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest) in the scope of the project ‘Fostering Global Responsibility: Building a Development Policy Knowledge Network to Enhance NGO Public Outreach Initiatives in EU New Member States’. The main objective of the project is to promote a greater understanding of development challenges, to facilitate greater public support in New Member States for poverty reduction efforts and to contribute to a more strategic and evidence-informed policy dialogue and engagement for international development issues.

More information and presentations can be found at: http://www.development-network.eu/

Foto: Discussion with Milan Lapin from Comenius University

Information provided by Daniela Balážová, MVRO

New Slovak Platform Coordinator

From 1st July 2009, Lenka Nemcová, is the new Executive Secretary of the Slovak NGDO Platform (Platforma MVRO). Within the MVRO secretariat she is not a new person at all. She has been working for the platform as a Project Manager from spring 2008. She has management experience in the private sector and is keen to work for the stabilisation of the platform with respect to personal and financial capacities.

There are currently two other persons within the secretariat of the platform: Veronika Kurinová is very helpful working part-time as Assistant of the Secretariat and Financial Officer in one person; also on 1st July, the former journalist and MVRO media officer Daniela Balážová became Policy Officer of the Slovak NGDO Platform.

Visit the MVRO website: http://www.mvro.sk/

Information provided by Daniela Balážová, MVRO

DESS 2009: 7 days, 85 participants, 35 countries… one view: “YOUth Act”!

For the 10th year in a row, some 85 participants joined the Development Education Summer School (DESS). This year, the one week learning experience was held under the motto “Recognizing, engaging, motivating young people as actors of development education, advocacy, campaigning” and hosted by Romania. PATRIR, a Cluj Napoca based NGO took on the lead in co-organising the event with DEEEP. Participants from more than 35 countries met in Cheile Gradistei, Transylvania, from June 21-28 to exchange on youth involvement in development education (DE). Among the participants were also some representatives of Plan Finland’s Children Board, who fed the youth perspective into the discussions.

For the first time in the history of DESS, a so-called “mission impossible” action was carried out with the participants: they had one week, within their working group (WG), to prepare a street action in Brasov, the closest city to Cheile Gradistei. Each working group elaborated a small action, according to its main focus (gender, environmental sustainability, multiculturalism and migration, media). The final “mob action” was organised in Brasov’s main square with participants dancing at the rhythm of “djembe” together with some local people curious of the noise made by the group. Although communicating with local people has been a major challenge for the participants (not many could speak Romanian), the outcomes of the action were quite satisfactory. Aside from the final event, the gender WG organised an action for raising awareness on domestic violence; the youth and media WG prepared a questionnaire on youth and global education and interviewed over 20 people in the street; the sustainable environment group biked across the city promoting the use of bikes; the participants of the multiculturalism WG wore small banners presenting themselves as citizens of the world, rather than of only one country. Furthermore, a “YOUth ACT” facebook group was set up and promoted in Brasov, in order to attract young people, explain what global education is and how and why they should get involved.

During the week, 4 further thematic sessions were lead by experts, namely on “Do no harm” (conflict resolution), “Youth and politics”, “School curricula” and “Creative methods for DE”. Time for networking was also made available through the market place, a small NGOs fair, in which participants could present their organisations and their missions.

For more information - to watch the Brasov action and the YOUth Act clip made by participants - visit the DEEEP website http://www.deeep.org/, or look for the “YOUth Act” group on Facebook, and join it! Further material (DESS evaluation, announcement of the next DESS in Hungary on “Schools and DE” etc.) will soon become available online. For further details, contact Chiara Tripepi c.tripepi@deeep.org and Tobias Troll t.troll@deeep.org.


Information provided by Chiara Tripepi, DEEEP

New Project: Gender and Development in NMS

KARAT Coalition has the pleasure to announce the start of a new 3 year EC co-funded project: Building Support in New Member States (NMS) for Gender-sensitive and responsive European Development Co-operation.

The project’s leading organisation is One World Action – an international development agency based in London, UK. Activities are going to be implemented in partnership with KARAT (Secretariat based in Warsaw, Poland) and in collaboration with four KARAT member organisations from: Bulgaria (GERT), Czech Republic (Association for Equal Opportunities), Slovakia (Slovak Center for Communication and Development) and Romania (Org 'AUR' ). The first strategic meeting for the project is planned in July.

The project is one of the pioneering initiatives aiming to contribute women’s voice to development cooperation debates in the EU NMS. The objective is to build the capacity of women’s rights NGOs to advocate for the full implementation of the EU gender equality policy in the government’s development assistance and to initiate cooperation between South-East-North on women’s rights in development. The project’s activities will include: regional and national dialogues, visit of the Sub-Saharan women advocates to the NMS, briefings on aid and gender, preparation of case studies and finally a big international conference in Brussels.

If you’re interested to collaborate or want to know more please contact Kasia Staszewska, project coordinator, at: kasia.staszewska@karat.org.pl

Visit the website of KARAT Coalition: http://www.karat.org/

Information provided by Kasia Staszewska, KARAT Coalition

Major breakthrough for Eastern European demands in Social Forum process

The next European Social Forum (ESF) is scheduled to take place in Istanbul in 2010. A Preparatory Assembly for the ESF was held in Vienna from June 19-21, 2009.

With the participation of approximately 130 representatives of social movements from all over Europe in the discussions around the present economic crisis and its consequences, the European Social Forum process made a big step forward. Particularly noticeable was the presence of approx. 30 participants from Eastern European countries, especially from Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey and Russia who held a network meeting in the so called Enlargement group moderated by Mathias Benek from ATTAC-Hungary.

After hours of intense discussions interpreted into four languages the network came up with the following action oriented conclusions:

- On the Crises in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE):
Working groups should be set up in individual CEE countries with the task to write down (before the next EPA):
· A portrait of the crises structures
· A comparative analysis of anti-crises programmes, including cultural aspects
· Concrete proposals based on this analysis

- On the Enlargement of the ESF 2010 to CEE countries
· For the ESF 2010, it is intended to set up a Support Group the tasks of which would be to contact and involve groups and initiatives, to gather and redistribute information including a new forum on the ESF webpage.
· At least one European Preparatory Assembly (EPA) should take place in CEE every year. Just a little preparatory group for each EPA (EPA host organisation, last and next ESF host organisation) should be established.
· Participants and movements from CEE countries are asked to write down proposals for their Western European counterparts how to help with the enlargement of the ESF process to CEE countries.

Any further suggestion or request, also from people who did not take part in the EPA, should be made to epa@asf2008.at Find further information on the European Social Forum process at: http://www.fse-esf.org/ For more detailed minutes of the Vienna meeting, please contact Leo Gabriel at epa@asf2008.at

The participation of CEE participants in the Vienna meeting was supported by TRIALOG.

Information provided by Leo Gabriel, Austrian Social Forum

From Lithuania to Zimbabwe: The fulfillment of undreamed dreams

Vaida Kontrimaite was born and grew up in Lithuania. Since her childhood, she has been interested in other cultures; especially Africa and the African people have fascinated her. In order to learn more, she decided to study Development Studies, Culture and Society of Africa in Bayreuth, Germany. In contrast to her German colleagues, she couldn't afford going to Africa during student vacation periods.

After completion of her studies, the contact to Helga Landsmann, who has been doing development work for 16 years, enabled her to spend her first three months in Zimbabwe and to see how development work looks like on the ground. She fell in love with the country and its people and was sure, that she wanted to go back. Back in Germany, it was not an easy task to apply for jobs in Africa, but Vaida succeeded in joining a DED (German Development Service) program for junior advisors and went on a year’s contract to Zambia. This experience qualified her to apply for development workers’ jobs afterwards. At the moment Vaida works with Horizont3000 (http://www.horizont3000.org/), an Austrian NGO, and is based in a small town in the south west of Zimbabwe. As an Organisational Advisor, she is helping the Edward Ndlovu Memorial Library to establish outreach programs to rural schools and communities. Vaida shares her impressions:

“I’m very happy to be where I’m now. When I think back to my school days, I did not even dream of finding myself in Zimbabwe 15 years later. I think I could not even have pointed at Zimbabwe on the map. I think the governments and non governmental organisations should do more educational work in European countries to raise awareness and open up possibilities for young people to know and experience developing countries. When the people in Zimbabwe ask me, if Zimbabwe is very different from Lithuania, I say that lots of things remind me of my childhood. I had to spend my school holidays in my grandmother’s fields and to draw water from the well and to use the pit latrine. With the help from the European Union in a few years the situation in Lithuania dramatically improved. People in developing countries deserve the same. There is so much that we can learn from the people in the Southern countries.”

For more information on Vaida's project or possibilities for voluntary work in Zimbabwe, please contact her at: vaidakon@yahoo.de

Information provided by Vaida Kontrimaite, HORIZONT3000

Euclid Network report on Civil Society in the Western Balkans

The Euclid Network has recently published a report about civil society in the Western Balkans. The publication is the result of a three week study-visit to Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania and Slovenia, which aimed to learn about the major challenges facing civil society.

The report is entitled "Connecting Europeans: Understanding and Empowering Civil Society in the Western Balkans" and can be downloaded at: http://www.euclidnetwork.eu/cmsallegati/news/204/Connecting_Europeans_understanding_and_empowering_civil_society_in_the_western_balkans.pdf

Euclid Network will be running a session at the Civil Society Forum in Bratislava on 17 September (see Events-section of TIS), on the topic of how lessons from civil society in Central and Eastern Europe can be transferred to the Western Balkans.

Information provided by Filippo Addarii and Ben Rattenbury, Euclid Network

Development and Transition: Regional Impact of the Economic Crisis

"Development and Transition" is a joint publication of UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and LSE (London School of Economics). The Newsletter aims to be a forum for policy-oriented discussions and debates about how the nature, evolution and challenges of development and transition intersect in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and also Turkey.

The focus of the latest issue is the socio-economic dimensions of the global economic crisis in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Download the July issue (in English or Russian) from: http://www.developmentandtransition.net/
Direct link to the English version: http://www.developmentandtransition.net/uploads/issuesAttachments/25/DT.13_English_FINAL.pdf

Source: http://www.developmentandtransition.net/

May issue of CONCORD Flash

The May issue of the CONCORD Flash - which reports the latest news from the European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development - has been released on June 18.

In this issue:
- CONCORD campaign "10 Days4 Development": citizens, let’s vote!
- Negotiating the post-2012 climate agreements
- European governments U-turn on the poor as economic crisis grips
- The Court of Auditors reinforces CONCORD views on dialogue with the European Commission
- Consultation on the European Water Facility
...and many other subjects.

Download the Flash from the publications-section of the CONCORD website http://www.concordeurope.org/ or use the direct link http://www.concordeurope.org/Files/media/extranetdocumentsENG/NavigationPrincipale/06.Publications/06_1_Concord_Flash/2009/May-Flash-EN-final.pdf

Information provided by Agnès Philippart, CONCORD

DEEEP updated Funding opportunities document

DEEEP, the Development Education Exchange in Europe Project, has published on its website an updated version of the "Funding opportunities document" which provides an overview of the private and public funding opportunities for development NGOs.

Download the document from: http://www.deeep.org/fundingopportunities.html

Information provided by Barbara Vodopivec, DEEEP

EC published Annual Action Plans

The Annual Action Plan (AAP) 2009 for the thematic budgetline Non-State Actors and Local Authorities in Development (NSA/LA 2009), including Part II on targeted projects (which was approved only on June 26), and the AAP for the Investing in People budgetline (IIP 2009-2010) are now available online on the EuropeAid website. The AAPs determine, how funds are allocated in the respective financial year.

Use the following links to download the AAPs:
http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/where/worldwide/civil-society/index_en.htm
http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/documents/aap/2009/ec_aap-2009_dci-investing-in-people_en.pdf

For the NSA/LA budgetline, it is still not clear, if the EC will launch new Calls this year, or if the allocated money will be used, as planned, for projects already submitted during the last calls.

Source: bengo eu-mail-info Nr. 260: 2. Juli 2009

Call for volunteers in Moldova extended

The International Committee of Citizen Diplomacy (ICCD) – Moldova Republic is looking for young volunteers from EU countries to join fours programs that welcome EVS volunteers in Moldova and offer them the possibility to work on different themes such as citizenship and democracy, rural youth development, culture and equal opportunities.

Names of the programes:
- CulturaLearn
- Rural Youth development
- Fostering Youth Entrepreneurship in Moldova
- Activating civil society from the inside

Duration: 1 December 2009 – 31 August 2010
Deadline for applications is September 1, 2009.

Find more information at: http://www.civildiplomacy.org/page.php?Id=5

For further questions, please contact the International Committee of Citizen Diplomacy at: evs@civildiplomacy.org

Information provided by Igor Gavrilov, ICCD

September 7-8, 2009: EuroNGOs Conference, Riga

Registration is still open for the EuroNGOs Conference and Annual General Meeting (AGM) 2009. Papardes Zieds - Latvia's Association for Family Planning and Sexual Health, the host of this year’s events, and the EuroNGOs secretariat are inviting to join the conference which will deal with the possibilities and challenges of “Investing in Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in Times of Economic Crisis". The conference will take place on 7 September 2009 in Riga, Latvia, and will be followed by EuroNGOs AGM on 8 September 2009.

EuroNGOs member and partner organisation from the EU, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as from the “Global South”, representatives from private foundations, UNFPA, WHO, the European Commission, the Baltic Parliaments and Baltic development cooperation agencies are invited to lively discussions and workshops aimed at enhancing understanding of the current and possible future impact of the global economic crisis on SRHR and SRHR funding streams.

This year's EuroNGOs conference will also take up the outcomes of the conference "Global Partners in Action: NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development" which will take place on September 2-4 in Berlin, Germany (see http://www.globalngoforum.de/home/).

For more information, a preliminary program and to register (before 15 July) to the EuroNGOs conference and AGM, please turn to http://www.eurongos.org/Default.aspx?ID=18832.

Information provided by Mirja Leibnitz, EuroNGOs

September 16-18, 2009: Civil Society Forum, Bratislava

The Civil Society Forum will take place in Bratislava, Slovakia, on September 16-18, 2009. The event is organised by the Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Forum will look in 20 year-old post-communist CEE reality, and provide a space for a discussion aiming to inspire civil society activists to come up with ideas and tools fit for a changing world.

The programme can be downloaded from: http://www.csf.ceetrust.org/article/forum-program. The Forum is designed to be a platform for dialogue, providing time for reflection and diagnosis, as well as exciting exhibits of new ways, concepts and energy to drive forward within CEE societies. The input of participants is what matters the most at this forum, and aside from taking active part in discussions, participants who wish to discuss a specific topic can check out the opportunities of YourSpace at: http://www.csf.ceetrust.org/article/organize-your-meeting!

There is no registration fee for attending the Civil Society Forum; limited scholarship opportunities are available. For more information and registration, go to:
http://www.ceetrust.org/civil-society-forum.html

Information provided by CEE Trust, http://www.csf.ceetrust.org/

October 2-4, 2009: Second European Fair Trade Fair, France

The 2nd edition of the European Fair Trade Fair will take place in Lyon, France, from 2-4 October 2009.

The financial crisis contributes in showing the weaknesses of the actual economical system while political, social and environmental values gain importance. Fair Trade can be an answer to citizens' questions. It proposes another economy, based on responsible consumption.

300 exhibitors and 20000 visitors are expected - an opportunity to take stock on Fair Trade, to sell products, to meet other professional stakeholders and to participate in round tables and conferences. They will highlight topics such as Southern producers, fair purchasing, environmental issues, Fair Trade education, responsible tourism and fair finances.

For more information, please turn to: http://www.european-fair-trade-fair.org/
For any further questions, please contact the Fair Trade in Europe Team at: info@salon-europeen-commerce-equitable.org

Information provided by Sophie Malichier, Association Equi'Sol