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On many occasions, the European Community have affirmed the
increasing importance of NGOs in several fields of activity
and also its willingness to assist the development of the
Civil Society in the candidate countries, as a support to
the process of economic and social reform in these countries
and preparing them for the future membership in the European
Union.
There are several initiatives to support activities on these
fields - one of the is the "Phare Multi-country program"
As this program is one of the many initiatives, we strongly
believe that the issues we wish to address are applicable
for the others, however, we will talk specifically about the
above mentioned program, and particularly about one of its
component.
The general objective of our recommendation is to promote
good practice on all levels in the implementation of policies
fostering sustainable development, with a view to ensure consistency
between the overall objectives of the "Environment and Enlargement"
program and the methods of implementation, including:
- the maintenance of an open and participatory approach
- the integration of environmental considerations into
all policies and procedures
- transparency and accountability
Achieving these objectives require that these aspects are
fully taken into account throughout the implementation of
this and other similar initiatives. In order to ensure the
effectiveness, sound technical and financial management of
such programs we require to consider the following:
- all relevant information shall be accessible to the stakeholders
affected, they shall be provided with a timely advance notice,
and their needs, expectations and opinion shall be considered
and incorporated.
In this matter, we recommend that the following phases of
the program implementation shall be improved:
- the public accessibility of the criteria for selecting
the service providers to be contracted
in this particular case the timely availability of this
information could have helped to clarify and more effectively
meet the expectations of the grantees
- the availability of information on the range of
participants invited for the event, with a view to make
full use of the networking benefits
in this particular case the invitation of the twinning partners
could have further contributed to building partnerships
among CEE and EU15 NGOs
- the availability of information on the venues,
travel options and other arrangements of the organized events
in this particular case enforcing costly and environmentally
rather unfriendly air travel actually resulted in some of
the NGOs not attending the meeting and raised serious concerns
in those who finally attended
- the availability of information for the trainers
on the participants, the nature and purpose of the program
in this particular case the capacity needs of the target
group could have been more precisely clarified by providing
the trainers with a short summary of the approved projects,
resulting in more effective lectures, giving more insight
to the selected topics
- more effective involvement of the participants
in designing and implementing the training
1. in this particular case taking into account the feedback
of the participants on the agenda could have contributed
to harmonizing the focus and range of presentations with
the identified capacity needs;
2. providing the participants with more time and opportunity
to present themselves and their programs could have resulted
in more networking benefits;
3. inviting the participants in advance to deliver some
parts of the training, where these NGOs have relevant expertise,
could have contributed to more effective experience exchange
on the practical level;
4. more thorough preparation in the field of the technical
and accounting management of the grant (such as collecting
questions well in advance) could have helped to avoid some
misunderstandings, to receive well-founded and officially
verifiable answers, and could have saved a lot of time-
and money-consuming phone conversations and correspondence
regarding this issue
- methods and criteria of evaluation
o the public availability of the evaluation results could
contribute to the transparency of the entire process
NGOs signing this document are expressedly appreciate the
program and its objectives and particularly value the Commission's
interest of providing such an opportunity. However, in order
to having full benefit of the program, we would ask for more
tailored-made, participatory approach in which are NGOs -
whom this program actually intends to support -are taken as
equal partners in design and decision making.
We truly believe that voicing our concerns will help to
utilize the progam to its full potential for everybody's liking.
Supported by PHARE Multi-Country Programme
"Environment and Enlargement"
This program is implemented with the financial
assistance of the European Union. The contents of this document
are the sole responsibility of CEEweb, and can under no circumstances
be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.
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