44 participants coming from donor states – Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway – and Romania met in Bucharest, Romania on October 10th and 11th at the first matchmaking seminar organised under the Fund for Bilateral Relations – Active Citizens Fund Romania.
The event aimed at facilitating networking, potential collaboration and encouraging partnership development among donor country organisations and potential Romanian promoters working in the same fields or in complementary fields. During the two days they spent together, participants got to know each other, learnt about ACF Romania and used the space to develop ideas that could turn into projects to be submitted to the forthcoming calls of the Active Citizens Fund Romania.
The majority of participants expressed their optimism that good partnership projects will be developed and shared their enthusiasm and engagement towards the new Active Citizens Fund Romania Programme that will be implemented during the next five years.
The Programme comprises 11 Calls for proposals that will be launched starting this autumn in the 6 Programme areas of support:
- Democracy, active citizenship, good governance and transparency
- Human rights and equal treatment through combating any discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation or gender identity
- Social justice and inclusion of vulnerable groups
- Gender equality and gender-based violence
- Environment and climate change
- Capacity building for NGOs
One of the strategic targets of the Fund for Bilateral Relations is to support donor states entities to get involved in projects. The event was therefore designed to allow setting the basis for a more facile, meaningful and sustainable collaboration between donor states’ entities and Romanian NGOs during different stages of the Programme – not just for preparing and submitting an application under one round of Call for proposals or another. It was meant to further explore the areas where expertise of donor states’ entities and promoters can be most effectively capitalised for the benefit of the civil society.
