CONCORD Flash: November - December

The latest issue of the CONCORD Flash reports about the activities of the European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development in November and December 2008.

In this issue:
- 2009 European Elections
- CONCORD meets the Africa Working group of the EU Council
- In Doha, rich countries sideline the developing world
- Discover the 2009 DG Development consultations
- Is there a future for the Cotonou agreement?
- Partnership between local authorities and NGOs: no more clichés!
- Discover the next Global Call to Action against Poverty in 2009
- A coherence king at the European Parliament
- When the European Commission reviews its budget
- How to improve the relations between NGOs & the Council of the European Union? … and many other subjects.

You can download the Flash from the “publication” section of the CONCORD website http://www.concordeurope.org/.
Direct link: http://www.concordeurope.org/Files/media/internetdocumentsENG/4_Publications/1_CONCORD_Flash/Flash2008/Flash-November-EN.pdf

Information provided by Agnès Philippart, CONCORD

Report on Riga Neighbourhood Policy Conference

In April 2008, TRIALOG participated in a conference in Riga about "The contribution of the European Neighbourhood Policy to the development of Eastern neighbours". Recently the organiser, the European Parliament Information Office (EPIO) in Riga, published a report which summarizes the opinions and ideas expressed by the conference participants. Experts from 10 countries - Poland, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia (including six MEPs) - and from the EC discussed the future of the EU Neighbourhood policy in the East and addressed the 90 participants at the conference.

The bilingual publication (English/Latvian) is available for download on the EPIO website: http://www.europarl.lv/; direct link: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/riga/2523/uploads/EPIB_konference_23_okt.pdf

Information provided by European Parliament Information Office, Latvia

February 7, 2009: Workshop for Youth NGOs from Cyprus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

The Future Worlds Center in Cyprus is inviting to a Contact Making and Project Development Workshop on 7 February, 2009. The workshop is targeted at members and representatives of youth organisations in Cyprus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and will take place within the context of a European Youth project 'Strengthening of youth civil society initiatives through EU and neighbouring countries' networking'.

The main aims of the workshop are:

• to meet Youth NGO representatives from Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan
• to identify common areas of interest
• to develop joint project ideas
• and to learn more about the European Youth Programme and its funding procedures.

For more more information see http://fwcis.blogspot.com/. To register for the workshop, please contact Kerstin Wittig at: kerstinwittig@gmail.com

Information provided by Future Worlds Center, http://fwcis.blogspot.com/

March 27-April 2, 2009: Pre-events and UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development

From March 31 to April 2, 2009, the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) will take place in Bonn, Germany. 700 participants, including high-level guests, will discuss challenges for ESD in the half-time of the UNESCO decade on the topic. For more information, visit the official website: http://www.esd-world-conference-2009.org

NGO conference "Global Learning, weltwärts and beyond“:
Prior to the UNESCO conference, the German NGDO platform VENRO and the CONCORD Development Education Forum co-organise a NGO conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and international volunteering. The event entitled "Global Learning, weltwärts and beyond“ will take place in Bonn from 27 to 29 March and will formulate a NGO contribution to the UNESCO World conference on ESD, which will take place just after the NGO event. The application deadline for this NGO conference is 31 January! For more information and the application form, please turn to http://www.deeep.org

Call for Participation - Young ESD Voices from around the World:
One day before the opening of the UNESCO World Conference, on March 30, a workshop with 25 young people from around the world with demonstrated engagement in ESD will take place in Bonn, Germany. Participants of the workshop will also take part in the World Conference. Workshop results will be presented at the Conference. Young people between 18 and 35 years of age are invited to submit applications for participating in the workshop by 9 February 2009! Find more information on: http://www.esd-world-conference-2009.org/en/esd-workshop-for-young-people.html

Information provided by Tobias Troll and Chiara Tripepi, DEEEP

Reminder: Development Education Summer School 2009

The Development Education Summer School (DESS) “Recognizing, Engaging, Motivating Young People as Actors in Development Education, Advocacy, Campaigning” will be held in Cheile Gradistei, Romania, from June 21 to June 28 2009. The DESS is organised by DEEEP, jointly with FOND, the Romanian NGDO platform.

If you want to participate, please contact your national NGDO platform by February 10th, at the latest.

More information on the Summer School is available on: www.deeep.org/summerschool2009.html, or contact Angelo Caserta, a.caserta@deeep.org

Information provided by Chiara Tripepi, DEEEP

ESoDoc 2009: European Social Documentary

The application deadline for ESoDoc 2009, the European Social Documentary workshop for NGOs, non profit organizations and filmmakers, is March 03, 2009. The three week-long ESoDoc workshops are held over a six-month period, usually in May, July and October.

ESoDoc aims at creating new opportunities in production for the European documentary market, where the focus is on human rights, social justice and environmental protection, especially in developing nations; at the same time, ESoDoc is a response to growing awareness, on the part of NGOs and non-profit organizations, that film and new media are strategic instruments for the promotion of their work.

For more information, please visit http://www.esodoc.eu/ or contact Thomas Righetti at info@esodoc.eu.

Information provided by ESoDoc Team, info@esodoc.eu; ZeLIG, Bolzano-Italy

EC Development Education Call open!

The EC published the Call for Proposals in Development Education for Non-State Actors and Local Authorities! Find all call documents on the EuropeAid Webpage. Use the direct link.

Deadline for concept notes is on February 17, 2009!
Read more about "News, differences and changes" in relation to this call in our seperate article at http://trialog-information-service.blogspot.com/2009/01/news-differences-and-changes-within.html

Check out which NGOs are searching for project partners for a joint EC project or post your own partner search on the TRIALOG website at: http://www.trialog.or.at/start.asp?ID=117

Note that all applicants and partners need to be registered in PADOR, see: http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/work/onlineservices/pador/index_en.htm
Find a "Quick reference guide" at: http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/work/onlineservices/pador/manuals/quick_reference_en.pdf
The direct link to register in PADOR is: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/europeaid/online-services/index.cfm?do=Pador.Register&userlanguage=en
CONCORD raised some concerns in relation to the PADOR registration vis a vis the European Commission - read the reply by the EC, forwarded by bengo, at: http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/reply-to-concord-january09.pdf
In case of further questions, you can contact the PADOR helpdesk: europeaid-on-line-registration-hd@ec.europa.eu

For NGOs from new member states:
If you have any specific questions related to the guidelines of the Call for Proposals, you can contact our capacity building officer Petra Kreinecker at: p.kreinecker@trialog.or.at.

TRIALOG at the European Development Days

The European Development Days were held for the third year running in the middle of November (15-17), this time in Strasbourg, France. The event brought together thousands of development actors, from presidents of developing countries, to individual teachers, including ministries, NGOs, regional authorities, European institutions and interested citizens.

TRIALOG’s director, Christine Bedoya, was part of the official programme, presenting the results of a side event organised in cooperation with HUMANIS, a regional Strasbourg platform of development NGOs. The workshop looked at the ways platforms and individual NGOs from old and new EU member states work together.

Participants heard from representatives of the Latvian, Slovakian, Romanian and Maltese NDGO platforms, as well as a regional platform from France. Main ideas included how new member states should partner up with older member states and developing countries for real cooperation, ensuring the flow of information between all three partners and moving away from the teacher-student model. Speakers gave examples of concrete projects where countries worked together successfully, such as the Regional Partnership Programme, which involved Austria and its four neighbouring new member states the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The group also discussed the benefits of new member states’ platforms being full of young enthusiastic people who are very motivated to work in this field and the opportunities offered by ‘new’ subjects such as fair trade and responsible tourism.

The results of the workshop and parallel workshops moderated by Coordination Sud and CONCORD were presented at a well-attended meeting on the second day of the Development Days. The event was also an opportunity to present TRIALOG and its work to a new group of development actors.

Find a summary of the HUMANIS event on the European Development Days' website: http://www.eudevdays.eu/Public/PressRelease.php?ID=2724. The full report will be available from HUMANIS in the near future. Please contact trialog@concordeurope.org for copies. The text of Christine’s presentation can be downloaded from http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/EDD-workshop-TRIALOG.pdf.

For more information on the third edition of the European Development Days, please visit http://www.eudevdays.eu/.

Information provided by Rebecca Steel, TRIALOG

New annual TRIALOG bulletin published

The Bulletin on EU Enlargement and NGDOs is an annual printed TRIALOG publication. This year's issue is out now and reports about the Prague conference and debates that continue beyond the conference; the focus is on voices from new member states and the EU neighbourhood. Read also about the upcoming Czech presidency programme priorities of FoRS.

This year's content:

• Editorial: Civil society on the right track to handle global problems?
• After the Prague development conference: Paradigm change inevitable
• South-East cooperation: A new member state perspective
• CONCORD strategy: Putting politics back into development
• Key note speeches of the 2008 Prague conference: Are we on the right track? Paradigm review by civil society organisations (CSOs) as development actors
• Macedonia on the way into the EU: The challenge of development cooperation
• Civil society development in Moldova: The role of the EU
• The Mediterranean region: Time for new mindsets to solve problems
• TRIALOG: Structure and activities
• FoRS for civil society development effectiveness: Programme of the Czech NGDO platform for the EU presidency 2009

Download the TRIALOG Bulletin 2008 from: http://www.trialog.or.at/start.asp?ID=178
Direct link: http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/trialog_bulletin_2008.pdf
Write to office@trialog.or.at to order a hardcopy; please indicate your name, organisation and postal address.

Black Sea NGO Forum 2008 in Bucharest

The Romanian Development NGOs Platform (FOND) organised between the 31st of October and 2nd November 2008, the Black Sea NGO Forum - “Time to Meet” in Bucharest, Romania.

The Forum gathered more than 220 participants representing over 100 NGOs from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belorussia, Georgia, Greece, Republic of Moldova, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania and other EU member states active in the wider Black Sea region. The event was organised in partnership with the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation and UNDP Romania in the framework of the Black Sea Synergy.

The aim of this event was to increase the level of dialogue and coordination among NGOs in the wider Black Sea region as well as to strengthen the advocacy capacity of NGOs in the Black Sea region in order to influence development strategies in the region. The organisers envisioned this forum as an opportunity for creating a pool of concrete projects and proposing concrete recommendations for regional NGOs and donors in order to increase the number and quality of regional partnerships and projects.

The programme included:

• Presentations of the state of affairs of the NGO sector in the region; perspectives of NGO regional cooperation; programmes and financial support for civil society initiatives in the Black Sea region;
• Three panels focused on a cross-cutting issue “Challenges and opportunities for NGO cooperation in the Black Sea region”, with presentations and discussions of the state of affairs in three broad fields: Social Justice and Human Rights, Democracy and Good Governance, Environment.
• Partnership fair to exchange experiences, to find partners for their project ideas and to elaborate project concepts in the field of social justice, human rights, democratisation and good governance, sustainable development. A portfolio of concept proposals will be presented to the donors in the region.

TRIALOG Director Christine Bedoya introduced the TRIALOG project as an example of good practice in creating capacity for NGO cooperation and exchange in the EU new member states and accession countries.

For more details on the Black Sea NGO Forum please visit: http://www.blackseango.org/

Fotos: Civil Society Development Foundation

Information provided by Adela Rusu, Romanian NGDO Platform FOND

EP seminar on development cooperation challenges for new member states

The European parliamentary group ALDE (the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) held a seminar on 12 November 2008. The meeting followed up the EP report written by Lithuanian MEP Danute Budreikaite earlier in the year on the challenges for new member states (see link below), and featured speakers from the national and European parliaments, the European Commission, CONCORD and the media.

Annamaria Kekesi, a board member from the Hungarian platform, was at the seminar representing CONCORD. She introduced the confederation and described the close contact with TRIALOG in relation to supporting the particular challenges new member states face in the field of development cooperation. She supported the conclusions that were made in the report and focused on four main challenges facing new member states: restricted capacity; low levels of awareness; limited national budgets and the lack of diverse funding for civil society organisations (CSOs) and platforms.

The presentation ended with an appeal to members of the ALDE party to provide support and political will needed to strengthen the role of CSOs in the newer EU member states. Annamaria asked that the MEPs support giving opportunities to organisations from new member states such as through weaker eligibility criteria for funding, and amounts directed specifically at them.

She also restated the important role CSOs play as development actors, highlighting their importance in development education and awareness raising and encouraging their inclusion in development policy making and programming, as well as the implementation of development projects.

Links:
Full text of the speech given by Annamaria Kekesi at the ALDE seminar: http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/alde-speech-annamaria-kekesi.pdf
EP resolution on "The challenge of EU Development Cooperation Policy for the new Member States" (adopted in March 2008): http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2008-0097+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN
European Parliament: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/
ALDE political group: http://www.alde.eu/

Information provided by Rebecca Steel, TRIALOG

Training in Lithuania: Mental Health and Development Education?

The Global Initiative of Psychiatry (GIP) invited TRIALOG for a 2day training in November 11-12 to Vilnius (Lithuania). Topics included the EU-strategy 2007 – 2010 for the Thematic Programme Non-State Actors and Local Authorities, the Annual Action Plan 2008 and the expected Call for Proposal on Development Education and Awareness Raising in Europe. The training was open to other Lithuanian NGOs as well.

12 participants from two networks working on the issue of mental health problems as well as in the field of intellectual disabilities, tried to interlink the topic of disabilities in developing countries with their regional focus on Georgia, Moldova and the Caucasus Region, in order to elaborate concrete projects to raise awareness in Lithuania and other European countries.

As a result of the training, aims and goals, indicators and assumptions of future awareness raising projects have been elaborated and formulated. Apart from this outcome, the group had interesting and challenging discussions on the whole dimension of mental health problems: on definitions, on where they start and how they are able to influence the development of a society – especially where mental health problems are combined with HIV/Aids. It seems much more "accepted", if health related problems are clearly related with traumatic experiences – with the consequences of war, natural disasters, violations. But even then, the affected persons are mostly excluded from their families and their societies.

A second training together with GIP will take place in December 4-5, 2008 in Sofia, in cooperation with the Bulgarian platform on international development and its member NGOs.

Information provided by Petra Kreinecker, TRIALOG

Provisional results of last EC development education call

The statistics from the EC on the results of the 2007 Call in Development Education (ED) within the budget line 21-02-03 are now available. Note that it is provisional data and some changes are still possible. The final results of approved projects and further analyses will become available in the beginning of 2009.

The preliminary EC data already shows that new member states (NMS) NGOs have participated much more as partners than as applicants. Only 3 project contracts will be signed by NMS organisations from Malta, Poland and Slovakia. That seems few, but when we look at the whole picture, all NMS are well represented as European partners in the selected projects: in total 59 NMS organisations will be partners in projects led by old member states NGOs: Bulgaria (11), Cyprus (1), Czech Republic (8), Estonia (5), Hungary, (6), Latvia (1), Lithuania (2), Malta (5), Poland (5), Romania (8), Slovakia (4) and Slovenia (3).

During the previous ED Call for Proposals 2006, NMS have been prioritised by smoother criteria and by the provision of an extra-budget. This time, during the CfP 2007, some smoother criteria were kept, but the NMS had to compete with the very experienced NGOs from OMS within one budget. This might be one of the reasons for the small number of lead agencies from NMS. Another reason seems to be the fact, that bigger NMS NGOs haven´t submitted projects this year as they signed contracts for their successful projects of the previous call only in December 2007 and have started to implement their projects in the beginning of 2008.

Download the preliminary results of the 2007 ED call from: http://www.trialog.or.at/images/doku/ed2007-preliminary-results.pdf

The next Call for Proposals 2008 is expected to be launched at the beginning of December 2008. Rumours say that this time the EC will give the NGOs a 60 days preparation time (instead of 45days) until the deadline for the Concept Note, in view of the Christmas and New Years break. It is foreseen, that – according to the Annual Action Plan 2008 – the EC will include in the upcoming Call for Proposals 2008 the budgets of 2 years - 2008 and 2009. This means that more money will be available for the upcoming Call, but it also implies that the following Call for Proposals will be published not earlier than in summer 2010!

Information provided by Petra Kreinecker, TRIALOG, on basis of information from EuropeAid

NGDO platform BPID – Bulgarian “Yes” to Development

Not so long ago, even before becoming a “new kid on the block”, i.e. newest EU member together with Romania, in Bulgaria there was already thinking and speaking concerning its future responsibilities in the development field. So in 2006, thanks to TRIALOG and CONCORD the development NGOs in the country started spelling the new vocabulary and discovering what was it all about. At that very moment the administration was not considering yet its future policy in this field, not to talk about drawing action plans, programmes etc. Everything started really shy and silent – Bulgaria was still getting massive support from abroad and it was really hard to imagine how in a year or two it was about to donate itself to other countries…

In the end of 2008, the situation looks quite different. The state already has its National Strategy, the MFA is creating a task force to deal with these important obligations, there is a constant dialogue with all major actors. Moreover – Bulgaria is already thinking of bigger commitments, adding in the near future more target countries to the initially defined Serbia, Macedonia, Georgia, Armenia and Moldova. Civil society is as well advancing, probably with lower speed one would expect. But still – the Bulgarian Platform on International Development (BPID) is just about to emerge as a formal structure. Its strategy for 2008-2011 is in place; its representatives are having active dialogue with state institutions. The successful implementation of a Presidency Fund project, aiming at formal structuring of BPID is another substantial impetus to the process. The project is getting implemented in partnership with the Austrian Platform and in cooperation with TRIALOG. Upon its completion, Bulgaria would have its active platform, which currently consists of 10-15 active member NGOs. Who claims, Bulgaria is not saying “Yes” to the international development yet?

As a next step, TRIALOG will hold a training on “Development Education and Awareness Raising” in Sofia on December 4-5, 2008, with the aim to prepare NGOs to actively participate in the upcoming EC development education call for proposals.

For more information on BPID, please contact Dimitar Sotirov, Project Manager of the Bulgarian Presidency Fund Project, sotirovdk@gmail.com

Fotos: Platform Strategy Meeting, October 2008

Information provided by Dimitar Sotirov, Bulgarian Platform on International Development