First TRIALOG Strategy Meeting in the New Project Phase

On December 4th 2012, the first Strategy Meeting of TRIALOG in the new project phase was held in Vienna. This meeting – in previous phases called the Central Training - is meant for mutual exchange and updates about the situations of the platforms and planning of joint projects. In a market place EU12 /AC platforms presented an overview of the platform situations, their achievements and challenges of the past couple of months with regards to financial situation, platform structure and priorities of work. It was clear that all platforms are struggling with an insecure financial future. Main challenges are stability and continued involvement of member organisations within the platform under the current circumstances but also the improvement of relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The day continued with a presentation of CONCORD priorities in 2013 by Klavdija Cernilogar, head of programmes, which was useful in relating to the platforms’ own activities. Following were presentations on specific policy issues and how they are translated into the national contexts of several countries. Jana Milerova of the Czech platform FoRS presented examples of how NGO effectiveness – also laid down in the Istanbul principles - is implemented by member organisations of FoRS. Kerstin Wittig presented the activities of the Cypriot island-wide platform CYINDEP to promote the Beyond2015 campaign during the Cypriot EU presidency. Marjan Huc of the Slovenian platform Sloga introduced the project “World Wise Europe” on policy coherence for development (PCD) where eight EU12 platforms are involved under the lead of the Belgian NGO 11.11.11. He elaborated how Sloga engages to relate PCD to the Slovenian national context and to get public and policy support for the topic. The discussions that started during the panel presentations continued during the following working groups where platform representatives were looking more deeply at the different topics. The sessions turned out to be a sharing of information, best practices and examples. In future the Strategy meetings will be held by the end of the calendar year. The capacity building activities of TRIALOG V leave a lot of space for joint actions.

In the photos: participants of the Strategy Meeting during working group sessions.

Information provided by Ulrike Bey, TRIALOG