Project Title: Culture of engagement of Polish NGOs in debates on EU Development Policy with decision makers and the public

Implementing Organisation: Polish Humanitarian Organisation- PHO, Poland

Total Budget: 45 000 euros

Total Request
from Fund: 45 000 euros

About PHO:

PHO strives towards making the world a better place through the alleviation of human suffering and promotion of humanitarian values by helping communities in crises to regain responsibility for their own future and become self-reliant. PHO shapes humanitarian attitudes among the public and creates modern culture of mutual help. PHO combines effectiveness with the respect for human dignity.

Description of the Project and Expected Results:

PHO motivated its application for PF funding by stating that most NGOs in Poland lacked a long-term strategy as they only received short-time funding. As a result they did not develop any capacity or skills for dialogues with decision-makers and had no knowledge of what happened at EU level and the links with national development policies, as the information was not available in Polish. PHO wanted to strengthen the NGO’s capacity, but particularly its own so that it could act more aptly as information source, facilitator and catalyst of partner NGO’s involvement in EU and national development policies. In its proposals it sets itself high targets such as providing 12 information packs of 5-7 pages each, reach 300 000 readers of news magazines, 200 000 readers of weeklies and having 1500 visitors looking at the website, without indicating how they intended to monitor this or report on the results in their final report.

Click here to read more details on the Project

Click here to download the Mid-Term Report Summary of the implementation of this project.

Results after Implementation:

PHO managed to organise a 14-day internship for its staff member at Camláhm, an Irish NGO with which it had already established a relationship.

This NGO also helped to identify a representative of an NGO in the South which focused on the European Partnership Agreements (EPAs), as a result of which PHO got involved in the debate on the EPAs and are now implementing a project on the EPAs funded by EuropeAid (see final report). As an information source they produced regular newsletters, which in fact replaced the originally planned (12) information packages. This activity is still maintained.

PHO had also created a good relationship with the media. It sent a journalist to Kenya for a study-visit of ten days, which resulted in the publication of three large articles (on microcredit, HIV and on slums).

In addition PHO managed to publish some articles on development (one written on PHO’s behalf by Mr. Kułakowski, MEP) in spite of the unstable political situation in Poland at the time, which kept the public and politicians’ interest strongly centered on national issues.

As a result of all these activities PHO is now regularly invited to events and recognised as an expert organisation both at national and EU level. However, as Mr. Kułakowski did not return to the European Parliament after the 2009 elections, the question arises whether PHO managed to establish relationships with other MEPs to continue its work at EU level.

As an innovative activity PHO designed a free postcard campaign and some 3000 postcards were sent by the public to MPs and other decisionmakers. Although PHO acknowledges that at the time the initiative was not successful, it had repeated the campaign at a later date with more success.

During the implementation of the project PHO took part in an event organised by Glopolis (21-24 April 2006) and contributed to a report drafted by Grupa Zagranica (to be published later in 2007), of which it was were already a member. It also joined the platform’s working group on monitoring development aid. Likewise, it is part of Concord’s Aid Watch group.

That PHO has increased its visibility and capacity can also be seen from the fact that since the PF’s project it joined two separate EU supported projects led by Action Aid and PIN respectively, in addition to the EU funding secured to work on the EPAs.