On the 30th of October 2015, Partnere per Femijet, one of the BPPF grantees for Albania, organized the launching event of the policy brief “The Situation of State Funding of Civil Society Organizations to Improve the Rights and Lives of Children and Youth in Albania”, in the premises of Mondial Hotel. At this event, representatives of civil society organizations, local government authorities, the Agency for the Support of Civil Society (ASCS), representatives of the Ombudsman’s Office and young people from the four target districts of the brief (Durres, Elbasan, Lezhe and Tirana), discussed upon various issues related to the sustainability…
Author: anja
On 30th of October 2015, the Albanian Institute for Public Affairs organized a roundtable event to present the findings of the occasional policy paper “CSO involvement at EU accession negotiations: Best Practices from previous accession”. The policy research output contributes to the debate in Albania regarding civil society involvement in EU accession negotiations. The references to other countries’ experiences offer a solid background together with concrete recommendations concerning lessons learned and best practices. What is more, the added value of the research lies in AIPA’s recommendation of the mixed model proposition as regards the level, modes, mechanism and stages for…
On February 2nd, 2016, BCSDN organized a webinar – “Measuring the Impact of the Third Sector: Concept, Metrics, Statistics, and Data: Developments to Consider in Advocacy Work”. The lecture was given by Ksenija Fonovic, SPES (Italy) Vice Director and Expert on European volunteering measurement and gathered 15 representatives of BCSDN staff and members. The aim of the webinar was to share the latest developments in the global efforts in measuring of civil society (third sector). Fonovic provided a comprehensive overview of the most important elements of two international statistical standards regarding third sector measurement and volunteer work, namely the revised…
More aggressive tactics by authoritarian regimes and an upsurge in terrorist attacks contributed to a disturbing decline in global freedom in 2014. Freedom in the World 2015 found an overall drop in freedom for the ninth consecutive year. Nearly twice as many countries suffered declines as registered gains—61 to 33—and the number of countries with improvements hit its lowest point since the nine-year erosion began. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a rollback of democratic gains by Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s intensified campaign against press freedom and civil society, and further centralization of authority in China…
Third Sector Impact (TSI) released a new Policy Brief “Assessing the Impact of the Third Sector in Europe: From Concept to Metrics. Progress on Indicators and Methods”. It addresses TSI’s contribution to a coordinated European approach that is capable of reliably identifying causal links between third sector activities, their impacts and infrastructure elements by which they are significantly determined. The Policy Brief commences with a concern about the unsystematic production of social and economic impact of third sector activities and therefore the lack of analytical frameworks, as well as assumptions rather than demonstration of its impact. The main finding is…
Members of global civil society have come together to make the voices of people heard and to hold leaders to account on the commitments they have made, including the Sustainable Development Goals, and key commitments on financing and universal implementation. CSOs from across all regions, involved in current civil society initiatives and platforms active in the post-2015 process, have created a civil society platform to provide coordination and accountability for delivery of the sustainable development agreements of 2015 – to inspire, enable and mobilize people to deepen their participation at the local, national, regional and global levels, and to work…
The Civil Society Scholar Awards (CSSA) support international academic mobility to enable doctoral students and university faculty to access resources that enrich socially engaged research and critical scholarship in their home country or region. The awards support activities such as fieldwork (data collection); research visits to libraries, archives, or universities; course/curriculum development; and international collaborations leading to peer-reviewed publication. Project duration should be between 2 and 9 months, starting from August 2016. Maximum funding requests should be USD 10.000 for doctoral students and USD 15.000 for faculty members. Civil Society Scholars are selected on the basis of their outstanding contributions…
The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) is launching its call for applications for the 2016 edition of the TRAIN Programme (Think Tanks Providing Research and Advice through Interaction and Networking) that seeks to foster a fruitful policy dialogue between think tanks and political actors in the Western Balkans. During a series of seminars, participants will receive training on the conduct and efficient communication of policy research and will have the opportunity to exchange their research findings with decision makers in Brussels as well as at the national level. Each participating researcher is expected to draft a policy paper relevant…
The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda is lauded as a new universal agenda, different than anything that came before; an agenda aiming to address social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development in an integrated way. However, major questions have been raised: How will the SDGs be implemented? How will the new agenda tackle old problems? And finally how to finance and implement this new agenda? The concepts of development cooperation and aid has changed and this must be taken into consideration while also addressing new challenges and needs. To answer these questions, the Civil Society Summit, organised by CONCORD Aidwatch…
The Magna Carta Fund for Human Rights and Democracy (MCFHRD) is the FCO’s dedicated strategic fund supporting our global human rights and democracy work. The FCO has reconfigured its human rights work around three interconnected themes that provide the basis of our funding strategy: 1) Democratic values and the rule of law; 2) The rules-based international order; and 3) Human rights for a stable world – tackling conflict and extremism. Projects can be one (2016-17) or two years long (2016-2018). MCFHRD will fund individual projects up to a maximum value of GBP 400,000 (approx. EUR 526.000) per year. More information…