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Issue 15
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April 2009
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INSIDE
THIS ISSUE
Editorial
What's New
CIVICUS
World Assembly Cancelled
Reflections: A Pacific Taste of
CSI
MENA
Region Partners: Concluding the Phase 2 Training Workshops
Enhancing Communication Within CSOs: The CIVICUS Civil Society Index Blog
Partner Profile: Counterpart
International, Armenia & Fundacion Soles, Chile
Contact Us
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EDITORIAL
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Dear friends and partners of the Civil Society
Index,
Welcome to the current edition of the CSI
newsletter, and the first one of 2009! The New Year has brought a
surge of implementation activity, with some partners already
administering their surveys and moving towards the National
Workshop. It looks like the training workshops from last year were
well received, and partners around the world are now moving
forward to implement the CSI in record time.
During February and March, we also saw the
final two training workshops completed: one for the Asia Pacific
region that took place here in Johannesburg, South Africa; and the
second at the beginning of March for partners from the MENA
region, which was held in Beirut, Lebanon. We now have all 55
partners trained and ready to implement the project!
These past months have also brought a few staff
changes as we say goodbye to old friends and welcome new ones to
the team. We thank Sinqobile Dube for her valuable contributions
to the team and welcome Muelelwa Khosa back from maternity leave.
In the coming months, we will also be welcoming Bilal Aurang Zeb,
a new M&E Programme Officer and Katherine Langer, an impact
assessment intern.
The CSI team hopes you enjoy this latest issue
of the newsletter as we continue to support our partners in
implementing the CSI all over the world! Please also remember to
visit our website (www.civicus.org/csi)
and the new CSI blog (http://civilsocietyindex.wordpress.com/)
for recent updates on the project.
With best wishes,
Amy Bartlett
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WHAT'S NEW
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- The CSI programme would like to announce
that, related to the MENA training workshop (see article below),
the CSI toolkit is now available in not only English, French and
Spanish, but also Arabic.
- The Mozambique CSI project report is now
published. The CIVICUS Civil Society Index (CSI) in Mozambique
was implemented by the Foundation for
Community Development (FDC)
between March and December 2007.
The report can be accessed via the CIVICUS website
www.civicus.org or you can
follow the link
http://www.civicus.org/new/CSI_Mozambique.htm to access it
directly
- The ISTR Latin America Regional Conference
will be held this year in Mexico, and the CSI will be attending
as well. A proposal was submitted between CIVICUS and some of
the implementing partners in the region, including Uruguay,
Mexico, Nicaragua and Argentina, and the proposal has been
accepted. Please check out the following link if you would like
more information on the conference:
http://www.istr.org/networks/lac/index.htm
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CIVICUS WORLD
ASSEMBLY CANCELLED
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Losing Our Assembly, Keeping Our Hope
By Tracy
Anderson, CSI Research Fellow
Job losses,
Bankruptcies, House foreclosures, Economic meltdowns…
The 2009 global
economic crisis has spread its tentacles far and wide, and so it
was only a matter of time before civil society experienced the
repercussions. After much debate and with much regret, CIVICUS’
Board passed a resolution on 15 March 2009 to postpone this year’s
World Assembly to 2010.
Katsuji Imata,
CIVICUS’ Deputy Secretary General-Programmes, had this to say:
“This decision has not been taken lightly and we are very
conscious of the fact that current crises facing the world’s
citizens make it all the more important that civil society come
together to discuss solutions to these challenges together with
government, business and funding organisations.”
With this in
mind, CIVICUS as well as the CSI is exploring a number of
alternatives to the WA in order to provide forums in 2009 for
building civil society solidarity, facilitating the exchange of
ideas and information, and evolving collective solutions. For
example, we will be attending the Latin America Regional ISTR
conference in Mexico in July 2009, where many partners from the
region will be in attendance.
We welcome any
suggestions from our members and partners to help us do so.
Furthermore, plans for the 2010 World Assembly are underway with
our hosts in Montréal, Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM).
Please check our
website (www.civicus.org)
regularly for updates on the 2010 World Assembly, and be sure that
the CSI programme will continue to engage partners and
stakeholders in 2009, with out without a World Assembly.
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REFLECTIONS: A
PACIFIC TASTE OF CSI
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A Pacific
Taste of CSI
Reflections
from Amelia Kinahoi-Siamomua, UNDP representative and participant
at the CSI Asia-Pacific training workshop held in February 2009
All the way from
the isles of the Pacific to the gorgeous green environment of the
“Cottages” in Johannesburg, all to learn about the CSI project.
It was a rewarding workshop in terms of the richness of exchanges
on the potential for making a difference to our communities, while
at the same time exploring the very similar challenges in
Asia-Pacific countries that will be faced by CSOs as they
implement the research and analysis for the CSI. The
society mapping shared by participants
reiterated the uneven playing field and power relations which
civil society operate with and must strategically find ways to
bring about positive societal changes in their countries.
The juicy part
of the CSI for me, is the “so what” aspect of the CSI --- at the
end of the research and analysis, would be the production of
briefing and policy recommendations and possible follow-up work to
make those changes happen? In my opinion, after learning about
the programme, the CSI is a tool and process for making those
changes happen! In the long-run, I hope to see the fruits of the
work of CSI taken seriously at all levels for a greater tomorrow
for our children and their children.
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MENA REGION PARTNERS: CONCLUDING THE PHASE 2 TRAINING WORKSHOP |
CIVICUS Civil Society Index training workshop
for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region partners
By Jacob M. Mati, CSI Research Officer
CIVICUS CSI held its last training workshop for
the 2008/9 implementation phase for its partners in the MENA
region between the 1st and the 3rd of March
2009 in Beirut, Lebanon. This was the sixth and last in a series
of trainings that have been running since August 2008. The MENA
region training was a little different from the ‘traditional’
trainings that we have done for other regions for at least two
reasons.
Firstly, the training was made possible through
a partnership of the United Nations Development (UNDP) Arab Region
Office (who graciously funded the training); the Arab NGO Network
for Development (ANND) a long standing CIVICUS member in the
region who undertook all the logistics for the training and
CIVICUS CSI team (represented by Nermine Wally and Jacob M. Mati)
who ran the training. The CIVICUS CSI team extend their thanks to
the organizations we partnered with to conduct this training.
Secondly, the training, just like for the
Swedish trainings in September, was not limited to only the NCOs
in the region. In addition to the partners drawn from Bahrain,
Djibouti, Lebanon, Morocco, and Jordan, there were participants
drawn from other civil society organisations that included Egypt,
Sudan, and Syria. The training also attracted attendance from some
academics as well as UNDP staff from various countries in the
region.
The idea was to introduce CIVICUS CSI
methodology to a wider audience in the region and build interest
that would lead to more countries participating in implementing
CSI in the region. This objective of reaching out to a wider civil
society community was further cemented by a networking session
between CSOs in the region that ANND and UNDP led and was also
graced by Ingrid Srinath, the CIVICUS Secretary General, on the 4th
of March 2009. The session was attended by over 40 participants.
The networking session was preceded by the launch of Toolkit for
monitoring MDG implementation in the region which was attended by
over 100 activists, government functionaries and UNDP staff. You
can find pictures from the CSI in Lebanon on our blog:
http://civilsocietyindex.wordpress.com/
We hope that the training will lead to the
successful implementation of CSI as well as to longer term
partnerships in civil society strengthening initiatives in the
region and especially so, considering that the region has the
least compiled data on the state of civil society compared to all
other regions in the world.
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ENHANCING COMMUNICATION WITHIN CSOs: THE
CIVICUS CIVIL SOCIETY INDEX BLOG |
The
CIVICUS Civil Society Index Blog is up and running!
By Amy
Bartlett: Programme Officer
The CSI blog was
launched at the end of February 2009, and is now enjoying dozens
of hits a day from partners, stakeholders and other interested
parties all over the world.
The blog
provides CSI partners as well as interested parties all over the
world a more informal and interactive way of giving and getting
updates during this implementation phase, and is serving as a hub
of information for people and organizations to disseminate, access
and interact throughout the project.
If you have not
already done so, please visit
http://civilsocietyindex.wordpress.com/ and share the link
with your colleagues, networks and stakeholders.
We have put out
a few calls for content and updates, and would like to thank those
who have already contributed. We encourage you to join the
discussions, and suggest that you can start getting involved in
the following ways:
- send us your
online CSI links and resources so that we can publicize your
online CSI information and progress
- leave a
comment to start a discussion on a posting or article
- send us your
updates, articles, information and resources so that we can
share them with the world
You can email us
with your content and submissions at:
index@civicus.org, and we
will post your news and successes for the world to see.
We look forward
to continuing our virtual interactions with you, and welcome
comments, queries and suggestions as we work to provide spaces and
opportunities for interaction and dialogue about the CSI programme
and your implementation experiences.
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PARTNER PROFILE:
COUNTERPART INTERNATIONAL, ARMENIA & FUNDACIÓN SOLES, CHILE |
Counterpart International, Armenia
Founded in 1965,
Counterpart International is a non profit organization dedicated
to building a just world through service and partnership.
Counterpart gives people a voice in their own future through smart
partnerships, offering options and access to tools for sustained
social, economic and environmental development.
Counterpart
International and its partner organizations are responsible for
the implementation of the Civil Society Index in Armenia, where we
have been working on civil society strengthening programming since
2004, and on humanitarian assistance provision since the early
part of the decade. For more information on this project and
Counterpart International’s work and partners in Armenia click
here. (www.counterpart.am)
We have forged
strategic partnerships in the public and private sectors to help
people improve the quality of their lives and revitalize their
communities in more than 60 nations. Counterpart International
provides people access to the tools they need for a life of
dignity for themselves, their communities and their countries.
Since 1993 Counterpart has built, developed and strengthened over
10,000 non-governmental organizations in Eastern Europe and the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), as well as the Middle
East and Southeast Asia. Working with local communities to build
their capacity to act on their local problems in the way they
want, Counterpart programs include humanitarian and relief
assistance, education, healthcare, democracy and governance, food
security, enterprise and business development, sustainable tourism
and natural resource management. For more info click here (www.counterpart.org)
Fundación
Soles, Chile
Fundación Soles
is a non-profit, non-governmental organization focused in social
research and intervention, aiming specially the strengthening of
civil society. Since its foundation in 1993, Fundación Soles
promotes amongst people the development of social justice and the
generation of a solidarity-based society, including the State and
the private sector on its initiatives. We constitute a meeting
point between the existing interests and needs for collaboration,
without prejudices of any kind. Fundación Soles has established
multiple alliances with national and international organizations
to enhance impact in development. Fundación Soles has engaged
several research in civil society related areas, culture,
modernity, individuality and complex systems, amongst other
topics, including civil society strengthening activities,
solidarity programs and volunteer work. More recently, our
organization is implementing for the second time in Chile the
CIVICUS Civil Society Index, a participatory needs assessment of
civil society in order to promote its strengthening. For more
about Fundación Soles, please
visit the website on
www.fundacionsoles.cl
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CONTACT US |
We value your comments, feedback as
well as contributions.
You may contact index@civicus.org
CIVICUS House
24 Gwigwi Mrwebi (formerly Pim) Street, corner Quinn Street
Newtown, Johannesburg 2001
PO Box 933
Southdale
Johannesburg 2135
South Africa
Tel: +27 11 833 5959
Fax +27 11 833 7997
e-mail:
info@civicus.org
Website:
http://www.civicus.org
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