TRIALOG Partnership Fair 2015

TRIALOG hosted the fifth and last edition of the Partnership Fair between 4th and 6th of May 2015, in Vienna, Austria. The event brought together over 100 participants, experts and facilitators from all over Europe, including Western Balkans.

This year’s Fair took place in a special context. While previous editions were organised in order to generate project ideas and partnerships in the view of upcoming Development Education and Awareness Raising (DEAR) calls for proposals of the European Commission, this year the Fair had a broader focus, as no DEAR call is foreseen until the start of 2016. This greatly influenced the format of the Fair, as well as the backgrounds of the participants, leading to a more diverse group of participants, and therefore a more diverse outcome in terms of project ideas.

The first day of the event was dedicated to an exchange of experiences in working with donors (input from Lucina di Meco), a discussion with two donors attending the Fair: Barbara Konzet from the Austrian Development Agency and Jiří Sýkora from the Visegrad Fund, followed by an input on the funding landscape for development cooperation projects, delivered by María-José Pérez (consultant from Haynes-Perez Associates). The day ended with the Marketplace, a space for participants to present their work, their experiences and to interact with one another.

The following two days were dedicated to the generation and consolidation of project ideas and partnerships, a process guided by Friedbert Ottacher, with the support of three other facilitators. In the end 15 project ideas were defined, to be further elaborated by the participants after the event as commitments were made with pre-partnership agreements. Project ideas range from development of employment possibilities for migrants, entrepreneurship for women in Ukraine, best-practice in volunteering, as well as teachers to teachers learning for Global Education, an educational project for Kenyan High Schools, projects on ethical and sustainable consumption, or slow fashion. Funding possibilities mainly explored for these projects are Erasmus+, DEAR and other EuropeAid funding lines.

The report of the event, a list of funding options and presentations held at the Fair are available here.


Information provided by Iulia Jolley-Socea and Ulrike Bey, TRIALOG