Fostering Successful Partnerships

Between the 19th and 21st of September TRIALOG held for the third time a Partnership Fair in Vienna. This event hosted about 120 participant coming from 84 development NGOs of 24 countries of Europe. The main objectives of the event were to deepen the dialogue and mutual exchange between Old Member States (OMS) and New Member States (NMS), to enable NMS platforms and organisations to access European Commission (EC) funds for Development Cooperation (DC) and to facilitate partnerships, cooperation, learning and exchange at an international level for joint projects for development.

During the conferences programme the participants attended lectures and discussions about EC funding schemes about the 2011 calls for proposals for Development Education and Awareness Raising and other relevant calls for proposals for NGOs. Input was also given about guidelines on how to write a successful co-financing application. Another significant focus of the Partnership Fair was the upcoming call for proposal 2011-2012, which has now been published by the European Commission. Deadline for submission of a concept note will be 21st of November 2011.

The main element of the Partnership Fair was the intensive and fruitful work in groups, in order to develop projects together for the EC calls and to share experience and knowledge. At the end of the event, 19 project proposals have been concretised with topics varying from women empowerment, migration issues, school partnerships, land grabbing, climate change, or local authorities, food sustainability and others.

For the TRIALOG team as well as according to the feedback of the NGO representatives the Partnership Fair was a great event. Participants evaluated that the Partnership Fair was “a very useful event to find potential partners for future projects, to establish contact with other European NGOs as well as to share visions and exchange ideas.” We want to thank the participants for their engaged work which was important for the genuinely atmosphere and the great results and wish success for their project proposals.

The full documentation is available at the TRIALOG website.

Information provided by Emilia Nunnari and Hannah Angerbauer, TRIALOG