CIVICUS - Building the skills of participatory governance practitioners worldwide

The last decade has witnessed the development of an impressive array of methods to empower citizens and promote participatory governance: participatory budgeting in Brazil, public service monitoring in Bangladesh, evidence-based policy advocacy in Uganda. These approaches have brought and continue to bring substantial benefits in terms of improved governance, citizen empowerment and tangible development results, but many practitioners remain unaware of them. Click here to read ...

Virtual think-tank network for CEE

Four non-profit organizations from Central and Eastern Europe have set up a virtual think-tank network on civil society in the region. The aim is to expand the space for thinking and reflection on topical civil society issues in the region. One of the first themes to be looked at is the generation change in civil society leadership in Central and Eastern Europe. The four members are NETT – Independent Think Tank for Civil Society (Czech Republic), Center for Philanthropy (Slovakia), Roots and Wings – Workshop for Development and Change (Hungary) and the Association for Community Relations (Romania). The network, whose name has yet to be chosen, was established in July.
 
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Grantmakers East Forum

Event Grantmakers East Forum: Engage
Date 8-10 October
Venue Dubrovnik, Croatia

In October, the resort of Dubrovnik usually welcomes American and British tourists. This year it also played host to the155 participants of the GEF conference representing local foundations, international donors, corporate funders – 155 out of 166 who registered for the conference. My guess is that the missing 11 ended up at the beach as the weather was gorgeous. But, yes, back to the conference. Click here to read ...

Sifting through the debris

Foundation endowments falling, governments watching the public spending pennies, donors of all kinds probably tightening their belts – the global financial and economic crisis is certain to affect the social sector, and at first glance it seems likely that the effects will be mostly detrimental. But what will the impact of the ‘downturn’ or ‘meltdown’ look like in different parts of the world, and is the picture entirely gloomy? Some of Alliance’s editorial board offer their prognostications.

Lucy Bernholz  Blueprint Research & Design, USA Click here to read ...

The sky isn’t falling …

Everyone loves to moan about a crisis, in this case an economic one. The words meltdown and tsunami are frequently used to describe the current situation. We are prone to take the most dire situation facing an NGO we are familiar with and extrapolate from the particular to the general. So it comes with a bit of relief, if not a dash of disappointment, when the data doesn’t uphold the doom and gloom. Click here to read ...

Conference considers trust and transparency

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EFC’s International Fellowship programme open to applications

The European Foundation Centre’s International Fellowship programme is open to applications. Through fellowships lasting from 3 to 6 (in exceptional cases 8) weeks, the programme aims to strengthen leaders in, and boost international cooperation of, European foundations and NGOs. Candidates from any European country are eligible for fellowships. They should be university graduates with at least three years of professional experience; they should have been working at their home institutions for at least two years and have a future job prospect there. The deadline for applications is 14 November. Click here to read ...

PCNC certification role restored

The Philippine Council for NGO Certification (PCNC) has had its mandate fully restored seven months after the Philippines president issued an executive order stripping it of its role of certifying NGOs’ donee institution status (see Alliance, June 2008). The order was first suspended then finally overwritten. Click here to read ...

Plug pulled on the Microfinance Management Institute?

Rappaport is not the only investor pulling the plug these days. It is rumoured that George Soros’ Open Society Institute is pulling funding to the Microfinance Management Institute, which to all the world looked like a successful programme. Created by OSI and the World Bank’s Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) in 2004, the Institute’s goal was to bring together organizations providing microfinance education to improve the quality of the curriculum and ultimately of MFIs. Both MFMI’s network and the curriculum resources grew very rapidly, but apparently OSI/CGAP define success differently. Click here to read ...

CEE Trust begins year-long debate on democratization

Commemorations are generally as much about investing efforts in the future as about paying respect to significant events in the past, and this is true of the year-long discussion about the current state, achievements, and future of civil society in the region initiated by the Trust for Civil Society in Central & Eastern Europe (the CEE Trust). The Civil Society Forum will mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and will culminate in an international conference in September 2009. It has grown out of a concern about the widening gap between the general and undisputed commitment to democracy and the mass (self) exclusion of citizens from the democratic process. Click here to read ...