Project Title: Increasing capacity of Hungarian NGDOs to more engagement to EU level lobby activity and to increase ODA management

Implementing Organisation: Hungarian Association of NGOs for Developmet & Humanitarian Aid- HAND

Total Budget: 39 745 euros

Total request from Fund: 29245 euros

Context at the Beginning f the Project:

A very recent phenomena in Hungary was the setting up of structures, such as policies to formalise the approach to development cooperation. However, the capacity of stakeholders remained limited coupled with the limited opportunity for cooperation with international stakeholders. Secondly, public consensus on development cooperation was almost non-existent.

Operating within these circumstances, HAND perceived its role at various levels. Firstly, it would create opportunities for NGDOs to step outside the realm of the familiar and explore a wide range of development issues and geographical regions requiring urgent development assistance. Secondly, it required to participate in the process of the formulation of the national development policy while contributing to the current debate at the European level on the EU Development Policy. Lastlly, it would build up a national consensus that favours the adoption of goals set by the International development agenda, especially the MDGs.

Description of the Project and Expected Results:

Through the implementation of that project, HAND would organise several workshops and establish different working groups among membership to introduce concepts, definitions, and various methodologies of international development cooperation and humanitarian assistance.

More directly, the project would achieve the following:
•  Enhance the level of coordination and involvement of the present member organisations of HAND active in EU development policy and would build new partnerships with other civil society actors. The member organisation would have easy access to good quality, updated information on development issues.
•  Facilitating coordinated actions in policy work.
• Contributing to the common aid-watch activities of EU-wide networks, assessing the effectiveness of the Hungarian ODA, increase the capacity of Hungarian NGOs to participate in aid-watching.Results

Results after Implementation:

The second PF funded project was agreed to while the first one was still being implemented.  The proposal focussed more strongly on developing advocacy and lobby know-how and capacity through workshops, study tours and development of an advocacy toolkit. HAND also wanted to work more on monitoring ODA and ensuring that national development cooperation priorities would be translated at the EU level. In fact the proposal was a continuation of/addition to the first project intensifying the lobby and ODA monitoring activities. The mid-term project indicated that while the working groups were actively preparing a report and attending international meetings, managing two projects simultaneously posed a serious problem. Many of the proposed workshops and study tours had to postponed to the second half of the project implementation period, while the advocacy toolkit had not been developed at the time of the midterm report. As the second and third grant overlapped, some of the activities were continued and reported on in the last report.