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ODI's Civil Society Partnerships Programme:
Progress so far and Plans for Phase 2
A meeting for UK-based NGOs, at ODI 6th March 2006
The purpose of this half-day meeting was to share the results
of the Civil Society Partnership Programme so far, discuss
what we plan to do next and explore opportunities for collaboration
and / or synergy with other UK-based organisations involved
in similar activities (see Programme
(pdf 77kb)). Thirteen participants
came from ten organisations (see Participants
list (pdf 84kb)).
The first part of the meeting focused on presentations and
discussions about progress so far and plans for the future
(see the presentation
(powerpoint 610kb). This included a
brief description of the RAPID programme (www.odi.org.uk/rapid),
an introduction to the Civil Society Partnerships Programme
(www.odi.org.uk/cspp/overview),
and more detail about progress over the last year (www.odi.org.uk/cspp/Achievements/index.html).
Key points during the subsequent discussion included the following:
- CSOs are increasingly involved in policy processes and
keen to use research-based evidence, but face many internal
and external difficulties.
- Many UK-based NGOs (VSO, SCF, WaterAid and IIED) are already
working closely with southern partners to generate and use
research-based evidence for global campaigns.
- It is difficult to get the right evidence in the right
format at the right time, and to ensure campaigns are legitimate
and credible. International and national organisations need
to be able to do this better.
- There is much good experience around and the toolkits
and guidelines that ODI's CSPP is producing will be a useful
addition.
The second part of the meeting focused on ODI's plans for
Phase 2 to develop a network of organisations in the south
that can help CSOs to do this better (see the presentation
and http://www.odi.org.uk/cspp/Activities/Phase_2.html
for more detail). Short presentations were also made about
IIED's RING (www.ring-alliance.org)
and INTRAC's PRAXIS Network (www.intrac.org/pages/praxis.html),
to learn how they have built their southern networks. Key
recommendations from the discussion included the following:
- The key ingredient is a shared commitment to a clear objective
or set of activities which are mutually beneficial.
- Trust is more important than formal agreements, though
they can help, and it is important to work out some of the
relationship issues early on.
- It may take a long time to build the necessary degree
of trust before the network can really work together and
achieve tangible results. Not all members will take part
in all activities and the network may be dormant for long
periods.
- Evaluating the impact of research-based evidence on policy
is hard. Harder still to measure the impact of this kind
of work through networks.
Suggestions for Phase 2 work and possible collaboration included
the following:
- More work on the role of evidence-based policy in less
democratic contexts
- Information sharing
- E-meetings
- A workshops on monitoring and evaluation
Click on the links for more information:
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