At the end of May the Foundation “TOGETHER” (Slovenia), Platform SLOGA (Slovenia) and People in Peril (Slovakia) organized a two day international conference titled “Improving relief work of NGOs in Central Europe: From constraints to opportunities”. The event was organized with the financial support of European Commission’s humanitarian aid department (DG ECHO). During the conference speakers discussed about overcoming challenges of humanitarian NGOs in Central Europe, setting standards for effective humanitarian aid provision and quality standards in relief work.The directors of “TOGETHER” Foundation and Development NGO Platform SLOGA presented the difficulties faced by Slovenian humanitarian NGOs, especially with regards to cooperation, coordination and the lack of adequate knowledge and experience. It was highlighted that the newly established Humanitarian Response Centre (HRC) offers an opportunity to overcome these challenges. Marginalization of smaller NGOs was also identified as one of the major concerns. The mentioned problems were also confirmed by participating NGOs from Slovakia, Austria and Hungary. Panels were also enriched by speeches from the representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia and Slovakia, VOICE and Sphere. The speakers welcomed the idea of more intensive regional cooperation and improvements in cooperation and coordination between governmental and NGO relief activities.
The conference also served as an opportunity for the presentation of the 2011 edition of the Sphere handbook that presents humanitarian charter and minimum standards in disaster response. On 31 May representatives of Slovenian and foreign NGOs participated in the workshop titled “Creating a network of humanitarian NGOs in Central Europe” where systems and processes that need to be established for the network to function effectively were discussed and a plan for further activities was made.
Information provided by Janja Mikulan, SLOGA
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