MiTi Foundation, Latvia

Total Budget:                             56 700 euros

Total Request from the Fund:   45 000 euros

The Presidency Fund sees its role in providing NGOs in the EU-10 with opportunities to work with international networks that offer them structures that best suit their unique approach to development cooperation and place this in the global context. From this perspective a unique project from a Latvian NGDO proposes linking NGDOs in the NMS with the Social Watch Network.

The project is designed around the methodology developed by Social Watch and its coalitions across the world.  The project will ensure an engagement between the civil society organisations  and actors in the political sphere and will seek to build national coalitions of civil society organisations as a means to strengthen impact. The underlying objective is to increase the visible accountability of European governments, including those of NMS, and the EU as a whole for the implementation of international commitments on social and human development, including the MDGs.

Through the implementation of the project NGDOs in the NMS will be engaged in the preparation of the 2007 International Report of Social Watch to be published in October 2007.  This will be followed by their involvement in the publication of the European Social Watch Report.  Through this process, national coalitions will be built and these coalitions will dialogue with decision-makers and manage the debate on policy issues thrown up by the Social Watch Reports. These national coalitions will also be involved in the Social Watch European strategy meeting.

The final outcome of this project is that NGDOs from each of the 12 NMS are involved with aid monitoring and will have developed the competencies to lobby their governments towards the realisation of the goals set out in the international development agenda.