FoRS Presidency Project “Civil Society Organizations Development Effectiveness"

The Czech Presidency of the European Union during the first term of 2009 represented for FoRS -platform of the Czech  development and humanitarian NGOs- a good opportunity for emphasizing the work of non-governmental actors in development, broadening topics and agendas of the development cooperation, and mobilization of the non-governmental sector and its involvement to European dimension.

On the occasion of the Czech Presidency FoRS managed a number of activities within the project "Civil Society Organizations Development Effectiveness" funded by the European Commission and the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs from October 2008 till December 2009. As a central topic the FoRS organizations chose Civil Society Organizations (CSO) Development Effectiveness. They contributed to the global process "Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness"(www.cso-effectiveness.org) by reflecting toghether with their partners about their activities and factors of their positive and not so positive impact on the life of poor people in developing countries.

CSO Development Effectiveness was also a cross-cutting issue in other priority areas of FoRS during the Czech EU Presidency: democratic governance, development education and awareness raising, agriculture and food security, sustainable technologies, migration/remittances and inclusive development. Gender had a special place considering its close connection with development effectiveness.

All documents and results can be seen in "seminars and conferences" section above.

Approximately third of the FoRS members and observers, of whom six had a status of a partner, was actively involved in the project. At the end of the implementation phase an external evaluation of the project took place.

The evaluation report can be seen here.

As the most sustainable results of the project were considered strengthening of the platform and FoRS Secretariat, strengthening of the FoRS working groups in development education and sustainable technologies, formulation and adoption of the principles of CSO development effectiveness, and strengthening the capacity of partner organizations to contribute to the process of effective development.

One of the main recommendations of the evaluation report for FoRS is mainly to provide NGOs the instruction for the application of  the  principles of CSO development effectiveness, defined within the project (in the "Prague Declaration" of the final conference) in practice, and to facilitate this project and involve more NGOs in FoRS (especially those, who weren't actively involved in the Presidency project) to the discussion of the development effectiveness.

FoRS will continue to support activities focused on increasing the effectiveness of NGOs work in development cooperation with the goal of contributing to its bigger impact. This support will be both on Czech and international level. On the Czech level, it will be expressed in restoring the FoRS working group of the development effectiveness. On the international level, FoRS will remain involved in the process "Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness" and it will monitor other preparatory initiatives for the  foruth High Level Forum in Seoul in 2011 as the important milestone in the process of the reform of the architecture of international development cooperation.