Reinvent or Face Irrelevance: CIVICUS Report Warns CSOs

CIVICUS launched its Civil Society Index (CSI) Summary Report for 2008-2011 Bridging the Gaps: Citizens, organizations and dissociation, bringing together assessments on the state of civil society development in 30 countries around the world. From the Balkans, 8 countries participated in the research, among which 4 were lead by BCSDN member organizations or associates. BCSDN will follow-up this amazing dissection of the state of our sector with regional and thematic-specific reports. One of the main conclusions of the report is that civil society - the sphere of people's associations and organizations - is undergoing its most significant crisis and change for a generation. Many established CSOs are struggling under the weight of multiple economic and political challenges, but are also disconnected from citizens, particularly from new, informal modes of participation and activism. The report concludes that the rise of informal activity, such as the peoples movements of the Arab Spring, offers a new challenge and opportunity to CSOs: they must embrace such movements to connect better with the public and renew themselves in order to survive. Download the pdf.

Source: BCSDN No. 237

TACSO Regional CSO Database Online

The Technical Assistance for Civil Society Organisations (TACSO) project launched its web-based database for civil society organisations. The TACSO CSO Database should become a comprehensive online listing of different Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the IPA region. For each registered CSO, information can be found about the organisation’s mission statement, area of interest, and contact details. The Database will serve as a reference resource to existing and active CSOs as well as a basis for networking and partnership making, i.e. on EU applications and funding, among different organisations. In addition, information on the legislation and government institutions that are relevant to the work of CSOs within the region can be found on the database. By registering on the TACSO Database, the CSOs are increasing their visibility, and are reaching out to potential partners which will assist them in accomplishing their goals. The TACSO CSO Database is accessible via TACSO http://www.tacso.org/cso-db-res/reg/.

Source: BCSDN No. 235

North-South Center Programme Volunteering and Active Citizenship

For the coming semester, the North-South Center (NSC) Global Education & Youth programme is flagging its activities under the theme of volunteering and active citizenship. While the annual University on Youth and Development (UYD) will gather in September over 300 youth leaders from all over the world to reflect, share good practices and expertise under the theme of Youth Volunteering for Global Development, the NSC will pursue its work for a participative global citizenship through its Global Education activities: indeed, and in the same logic as the UYD, the Global Education e-training course, starting the 3rd of October under the topic of Intercultural Learning (3-28 October; application until 26 September 2011), and the Global Education Week, from 12 to 20 November under the leading theme "Act for our Planet!" will aim at raising awareness and empower citizens for action for a global change.

In parallel, and building on the recently approved Recommendation of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers to member states on education for global interdependence and solidarity, the second semester will be determinant for the NSC policy-making in the field of GE: the last regional seminar for the promotion of GE in new EU member States will take place in Slovenia in 17-18 October, involving SEE/Med countries stakeholders into the debate of global education and the sharing of strategies for the promotion of GE.

This collaborative approach with partners, and their respective feedback, will contribute to the improvement and updating of the NSC pedagogical and training tools in the field of GE and set the working-frame of the Pan European Congress foreseen in 2012. Meanwhile, the new space for Global Educators community created on NSC Facebook page, aims at facilitating and encouraging this proximity between the NSC and its partners and stakeholders for a fruitful and continuous work.

For more information, please contact Miguel Silva.

Source: DE Times September 2011, Information provided by Miguel Silva

2011 EESC Civil Society Prize

Theme of the 2011 prize rewarding excellence in civil society initiatives is Dialogue and participation fostering EU values: integration, diversity, solidarity and tolerance. The 2011 prize will reward civil society projects and initiatives serving the EU values which underpin the European integration process, and the overall objective of the prize, which have proved to be innovative in concept and application and made a valuable contribution to the well-being of their communities. Also, dialogue and participation must be the essential means through which those initiatives and projects have been achieved. The prize, of a total value of EUR 30 000 and which will be awarded on 7 December 2011, is open to civil society organisations, at European, national, regional and local levels, established in the European Union. The deadline for submitting applications is 7 October 2011. Detailed information on eligibility criteria and the procedure for entries, as well as an application form, is available in all EU languages under the "How to apply ?" at the website: http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.organised-civil-society-prize-2011

CONCORD Recruits Capacity Building Officer and Head of Policy

The European NGO confederation for Relief and Development CONCORD offers two full time positions in Brussels. Deadline for applications for the position as Capacity Building Officer is 19th September 2011. Closing date for the position as Head of Policy is 25th September 2011. Find detailed information at: http://www.concordeurope.org/Public/Page.php?ID=31736&language=eng. Please send the cover letter and CV in English only by e-mail to okerrigan@concordeurope.org .

Changes in TRIALOG Team

The TRIALOG team is again in a moment of changes. Monika Matus who replaced our Policy Officer Rebecca Steel Jasińska during her maternity leave left us in June earlier than foreseen to join the Polish NGDO platform Grupo Zagranica as Policy Officer for the current Polish EU presidency. Rebecca will come back from maternity leave in September. This means that our Brussels office will be closed till September and the main responsibility for the working group on Enlargement, Pre-Accession and Neighbourhood (EPAN) lies now with the EPAN steering group. We would like to thank Monika for her engagement with TRIALOG. In order to contact the EPAN group, the interim chair is Valery Pandzharov, Email: v.pandzharov@ecip-bg.org.

Our Capacity Building Officer Andra Tanase will have a baby mid September and will go on maternity leave in the middle of July. Her replacement will be Faika El-Nagashi, graduated in Political Science, who for the last 11 years has been coordinating the regional cooperation in Eastern Europe on human rights, migration and access to public health care within the TAMPEP network. In this position she was reponsible for networking, capacity building, EU project development and research. Faika will start working with us at the end of August.

Due to the changes and holiday season, our offices will be closed as follows:
Brussels office closed all July and August
Vienna office closed from August 1st-19th

Information provided by Christine Bedoya, TRIALOG

TRIALOG Exchange: Rural Development a Window to Sustainable Development Cooperation

As part of the exchange activity in our project, TRIALOG invited participants from the New Member States to the Conference Rural Development – Natural Resource Management from20th to 22nd June in Vienna, organised by TRIALOG’s lead agency HORIZONT3000. The aim of this conference was to present, share and discuss experiences, good practices and methods in the sector 'Rural Development – Natural Resource Management' with HORIZONT3000 project partners from 8 different countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia as well as key stakeholders from Europe.

Key note speakers presented their experiences and the participants discussed on their inputs in working groups. The knowledge transfer and exchange continued in market places of organizations from the global South and was rounded up by field visits to an organic farm and to the Centre for Development Research at the BOKU University of Vienna.

TRIALOG supported the conference logistically and Capacity Building Officer Andra Tanase moderated the panel sessions. Among the 80 participants were 12 project partners from the Global South, representatives from 30 European organisations (among them three from the New Member States), universities and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

The New Member States participants appreciated the opportunity to meet partners and to get an insight to the projects of HORIZONT3000. This knowledge can be used for development education work and awareness raising for ongoing discussions around the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) in the New Member States. The participants from the NMS also discovered parallels in challenges rural development faces in some of their countries and in the Global South.

Linda Jakobsone from LAPAS (Latvia) underlines the importance of exchange: “The examples provided will be useful in our global education work, cooperation work with partners in other parts of the world and lobby work we do in Latvia and on EU level. The contacts made will be used for future cooperation.” Ruta Pels from Eesti People to People (Estonia) commented: “I found out that many problems in Africa, Latin America and Asia are very similar to those we have in Baltic countries.[…] The study visit to BOKU university gave the opportunity to learn about cooperation between HORIZONT3000 and the university, to meet professors and to interact with students”.

TRIALOG saw this conference as an outstanding opportunity to meet with partners from the South and many European organisations to share knowledge and to make new or deepen existing contacts and regretted the fact that only three representatives took advantage of it. But they did enjoy and appreciate the days of the conference highly!

For further documentation please also see http://www.horizont3000.at/

Information provided by Elisa Romero, TRIALOG

Quality and Impact in Development Education: DEEEP Summer School 2011 in Finland

The Development Education Summer School (DESS) 2011 was organized in cooperation with DEEEP and KEHYS, the Finnish Development NGO Platform to the EU. The Summer School brought together around 70 development education practitioners from around the globe to spend one week at a lakeside location in Southern Finland with a mission to reply to challenging questions: What do we mean by quality and impact? What do we want to achieve and what is our vision? What can we do better and what kind of ways are there to measure how we are doing?

The DESS 2011 also featured a strong Multi-Stakeholder component. Half a dozen members of the European Multi-Stakeholder group on Development Education visited the DESS 2011 for half a day, participating in one of the working group sessions and a thematic session led by expert Bobby McCormack, focusing on evaluation. KEHYS in cooperation with the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs organized an international conference “Social Change – Impact and Evaluation in Development Education and Awareness-Raising” in Helsinki on the 16th of June. The conference gathered nearly 200 participants ranging from Development Education experts to interested beginners and from ministry officials to researchers, business sector and NGO representatives, including the DESS 2011 participants. The keynote speaker at the conference was Mr. Martin Kirk, Head of Campaigns at Oxfam GB. Mr. Kirk presented his research on why and how to use positive values and frames when communicating and planning the activities of development NGOs (more infomration at http://www.findingframes.org/).

International organizations were also featured at the conference as Mr. Mark Richmond, the Director of the Division of Education for Peace and Education for Sustainable Development at UNESCO spoke in the opening plenary and in the final panel. Between the plenary sessions, conference participants picked a workshop of their choice out of eight different themes such as “Creating a message” or “Social media strategies”, led by experts and followed by group work on the topic. After the conference the Summer School participants explored the Finnish development education scene in Helsinki in small groups which visited different NGOs in the afternoon.

Memorable experiences, from boat-rowing on the lake to debating on the definition and measurement of impact filled the days and nights of the Summer School. The working groups of the Summer School discussed critically and contributed to the creation of a common European quality framework on development education. If you want to know more about the content of the DESS 2011, please contact your national DARE Forum representative and follow the DEEEP website where the reports of the four different working groups and other DESS related material will be uploaded in the course of autumn: http://www.deeep.org/.

Information provided by Riikka Suhonen, KEHYS

Zagranica publishes Memorandum for Polish Presidency

On 1st of July 2011, Poland took over the presidency of the EU Council, which means that it is going to give political direction to the EU, host most EU events, and play key role in all areas of the EU activity, including development cooperation. Zagranica Group, the association of Polish non-governmental development organizations, presents a memorandum with objectives in the area of development cooperation, on which the Polish government should focus in this strategic period. Poland may and should strengthen its activities, especially in the context of involvement in the Eastern Partnership countries, developing countries of the Global South, and in North Africa.

In the memorandum, Zagranica Group calls for the Polish government to advance and implement several objectives during the Presidency of the EU Council. These are to increase the level of development cooperation financing; to initiate international dialogue regarding democratization objectives; to implement the recommendations regarding aid effectiveness; to provide for transparency of actions and financing in Polish aid; to increase the participation of civil society in programming and implementing development cooperation; to strengthen and promote global education and awareness raising on development issues.

Zagranica Group says it is open for cooperation on searching for the best solutions for Polish and European development policy. Polish national media start to be interested in the topic of development cooperation, thanks to information spread by Zagranica Group. The time of the Polish Presidency will show, whether Polish CSOs are invited to debate on global issues, or not. Anyway, Polish NGDOs will watch carefully, how the Polish government acts as a host of the European Union’s events.

Read the full Memorandum to the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union here.

For more information contact: Monika Matus, Policy Officer of Zagranica Group, monika.matus@zagranica.org.pl; Magdalena Trojanek, Communication Officer, magdalena.trojanek@zagranica.org.pl

Information provided by Magdalena Trojanek, Zagranica

FOND Becomes Full Member of CONCORD

During the last CONCORD General Assembly (21st-22nd June, Brussels), the Romanian development NGO Platform – FOND joined as full member the European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development. This decision reflected the common interest of FOND in the activities of CONCORD and its Working Groups, shared by the platform members during the last FOND General Assembly (February 2011).

Over the past years, FOND members have already been actively engaged in various CONCORD Working Groups, such as Aid Watch, EPAN, DARE and Cotonou, with support from TRIALOG. FOND will promote Concord’s policy priorities at the national level (the platform is officially recognised as a strategic partner of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and will provide useful input reflecting the perspective of the NGDO community on Romania’s role as a new donor, thus strengthening the position of NMS in influencing development issues at the European level.

Information provided by Adela Rusu, FOND

Romanian Development Camp IV

What is the role of the new donors in the future European development architecture? This was the leading question addressed during the three days of the Romanian Development Camp (fourth edition). The event was organized by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in partnership with the Romanian NGDO Platform (FOND) during the 6th-8th of July, in Cluj–Napoca, Romania.

This edition has brought together almost 100 participants from various countries and different backgrounds: foreign ministries, development practitioners, members of Parliament, civil society, private sectors, local authorities, media, academia.

Representatives from CONCORD and other European NGDOs platforms from Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic have had an important input in the discussions and presented their experiences in development cooperation, including priorities and challenges, as well as their position on relevant European documents such as the Green Paper, Multi-annual Financial Framework 2013-2020, European Transition Compendium, etc.. This was a great opportunity for Romanian NGOs and Government to open up an interesting on the role of Romania as a new donor and its added value alongside the other 11 “new” member states.

This is the second time when FOND organized this event together with the Romanian MFA. During the last year’s edition, EU Commissioner for Development, Mr. Andris Piebalgs, stressed that development should be at the center of the foreign policy agenda and NGOs represents the driving force for development cooperation. FOND will continue the dialogue with the Government and other relevant national actors (the private sector, academia, media) promoting a coherent and effective development cooperation policy.

Information provided by Adela Rusu, FOND

New DARE Forum position papers

The development education working group o the CONCORD confederation, DARE Forum, published two new position papers. The first one, Development needs Citizens, redefines the role and contribution of development education and awareness raising (DEAR) to the development discourse. The paper, which was endorsed by the DARE Forum members at their last meeting in May, defines “development” as “shared responsibility for planet and humanity”. It argues that DEAR fosters public engagement: This would be important in order to provide legitimacy for political action on global justice, to foster individual engagement and to open a public debate on the root causes of global poverty.

Development Education, based on strong universal values and through the promotion of critical thinking and deep engagement, would be particularly well placed to do so. Furthermore, DEAR would foster the emergence of a Global Civil Society: DEAR as citizens’ empowerment for change, not involved with a “powerful giver-grateful receiver approach” would be particularly well placed to engage citizens all around the world in issues of global justice, which then would form the natural tissue of a global civil society. And lastly, DEAR would be central to new development paradigms such as a Human Rights Based Approach to development, Policy Coherence for Development and Development Effectiveness. The paper contains a number of recommendations to NGOs and other development actors. Download the position paper from the DEEEP website.

DARE Forum Youth and Children working group has published a position paper on Involving Youth and Children in Development Education and Awareness-raising.

For more information contact by DEEEP advocacy officer Tobias Troll

Information provided by DEEEP

Quality criteria for development cooperation: Sloga and TRIALOG training

As a part of its annual training events, the Sloveninan development NGO platform SLOGA organised a TRIALOG training entitled “Quality criteria for development cooperation” in Ljubljana between 29.06. and 30.06. The aim of the training was capacity building on how to implement different quality criteria through the project cycle management of development cooperation and education projects.

The training, delivered by TRIALOG capacity building Officer Andra Tanase, addressed the issues of quality in programming, project writing, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development cooperation projects. Participants from, mainly, Slovenian development NGOs with various experience in this field, were first introduced to different tools that help increase the quality of their projects. After that, they had a chance to use the tools in workshops where they prepared »real« projects.

There was also short workshop on “EC Standard Contract management”, delivered by SLOGA participants of the first module of the TRIALOG Training for Multipliers (11. – 14. April 2011). At the end of the training all participants agreed that there is much room for improvement of quality of their projects. Both the participants and SLOGA as organizer were satisfied with the training and at the same time expressed the need for more training in this field.

Information provided by Aleš Rovšnik, SLOGA

Human Security Initiative 2015 established

An international "Human Security Initiative 2015" group (HS - 2015 -) was created on June 17th, 2011. The group aims at deepening the concept of Human Security as a development paradigm in light of the post Millennium Development Goal (MDG) discourse. The group consists of around 20 international development practitioners, government officials and scholars.

The initiative group was born out of the international conference “Human Security – Towards Empowering Development” that took place on June 16, 2011 in Riga. The conference brought together prominent development economists and Baltic States’ and other European development practitioners at the NGO, government and EC levels to exchange information about the use of the concept of human security. The conference was hosted in Latvia, as it will be holding EU Presidency in 2015, at the time when the MDGs are aimed to be reached.

The main conclusion reached at the conference was that Human Security as a development cooperation concept has a lot to offer: it is human rights-based, participatory, takes into account not only objective but also subjective realities, steps over the irrelevant North-South distinction, offers customized solutions and value for money. Furthermore, it can be used as a tool for prioritizing action as well as assessing progress in achieving human security, that is, empowerment or people’s ability to take responsibility for their own and society’s well-being.

Having assessed the potential of Human Security as a post-2015 lead-concept, integrating and moving beyond the MDGs, the initiative group set two main goals: 1) exploring and deepening the concept of Human Security for development cooperation and 2) following and examining other discussions on the post-MDG agenda.

The conference was hosted by the Latvian Platform for Development Cooperation (LAPAS) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia in cooperation with the Estonian Roundtable for Development Cooperation (AKÜ) and the Lithuanian National Platform of Development Non-Governmental Organisations.

For more information contact LAPAS at info@lapas.lv

Information provided by Ieva Snikersproge, LAPAS