EU-13 Advocacy on DEAR – Radio Show by CYINDEP

Over the past two years the changes that occurred to the EC-funded DEAR Programme have affected the capacity of small NGOs and especially from the EU13 countries to participate, thus posing great challenges to their sustainability. The EU13 National NGDO Platforms with the support of TRIALOG have been jointly and individually advocating for the improvement of the DEAR Call in order to allow different capacity organizations to equally benefit from this funding programme.

As part of this effort, the Cypriot radio show Let’s Go Global  hosted Rebecca Steel-Jasinska, Project Manager of TRIALOG, to demystify this complicated policy issue and discuss how civil society can contribute to a constructive dialogue with the European Commission and work together to improve the future rules of the programme. The hosts of the show, Annagrace and Sophia, both civil society workers and members of the Cypriot NGO platform CYINDEP, took the opportunity to present the situation at the local level. They explained the difficulties faced by NGOs in Cyprus, a country where civil society is still young and was traditionally focused around peacebuilding due to its political problem. Currently, with a financial crisis that affected all aspects of the society and the main donors having withdrawn from the country, local NGOs are facing challenges in surviving.

You can listen to the radio show here.

Let’s Go Global is a fortnightly radio show hosted by CYINDEP at MYCYradio, the first multi-lingual web radio in Cyprus. The show focuses on issues around global education, development cooperation, social justice, sustainable development, peace, and many more. Even though the title of the show reveals its global direction, this is always done through the lens of the local experience and encourages actions at the community level that can contribute to positive global change.


Information provided by Sophia Arnaouti, CYINDEP