TRIALOG will enter its fifth Phase

TRIALOG is almost at the end of its fourth project phase and we are happy to inform our readers that both the European Commission as well as the Austrian Development Agency have approved the co-funding for the next phase of TRIALOG within the DEAR call/NSA-LA programme.

TRIALOG V will start on October 1st 2012 with a project duration of three years. Since the beginning of TRIALOG in 2000 a lot has changed within the scope, mandate and target group of the project. TRIALOG was created to support the enlargement of the European Union through civil society organisations active in development cooperation. This was quite a challenge as most of the twelve countries that have joined the EU since then (EU-12) were receiver countries of Official Development Assistance until they joined the EU and had to create development cooperation structures, policies and programmes from scratch. To support this process, TRIALOG has been leading activities in different fields over the last 12 years including capacity building, information distribution, policy support, networking and last but not least advocacy on national and European level. The situation is quite different now when all EU-12 countries have strong national platforms which are members of CONCORD. But there are still huge challenges to face in all EU-12 mainly related to financial and human resources, expertise in policy and advocacy and their role as “new” donors. TRIALOG’s role has changed towards an accompanying supporter by networking, giving advice, providing good examples, organising exchange and study visits, offering specialised capacity building and placing relevant experts in the national platforms of the EU-12.

For the first time, all EU-12 national platforms and a leading organisation of the platform building in Croatia are partners in TRIALOG. This shows the ownership that they have of TRIALOG and at the same time will strengthen the decentralisation of certain activities such as capacity building activities. To ensure the necessary human resources, a liaison officer will be financed in each platform. HORIZONT3000 is again lead agency of TRIALOG V and some partners from the past are continuing their cooperation in the consortium: CONCORD, AGEH (GE), Light for the World (AT) and PAH (PL).

Within the new phase, TRIALOG will organise centrally two European partnership fairs where NGOs from all over the EU are invited to elaborate joint project proposals. There will be annual exchange meetings for all EU-12/EU-13 platforms and a training of multipliers for the liaison officers in the platforms. In cooperation with CONCORD, we will publish policy briefings and thus support the active policy engagement of EU-12/EU-13 at the European and global level.

For us in TRIALOG this is a great success story. We thank all of you for your cooperation and support and see it as a mandate to continue our TRIALOG work with enthusiasm and energy.

Information provided by Christine Bedoya, TRIALOG