“It listens all the time, but what do civil society organizations have to suggest? Usually their suggestion is:
You must have involvement with the local community. We completely agree with that. The central government keeps telling the state “please empower your local community”. The central government doe snot have the power to do that, only the stare government has.
You should involve the NGOs, and we agree with that too. When good NGOs get involved they improve the quality of implementation and we encourage people to involve good NGOs. But the central government cannot start saying that this NGO is better than that NGO; it is the local body which controls the decision which has to choose the NGO. The problem is that if local bodies don’t want change they will surely not choose NGOs which want change… that is social capital, social harmony.”
“No scheme is perfect, it is impossible to have a scheme which has zero leakage. When you say that they don’t reach at the bottom do you mean that the leakage is 100… absolutely not! Leakage are high, even as high as 30%, but 70% is reaching at people. The other reason people think that the schemes are not having the effect that the effect that were expected, is that the challenges are very complex one… you can have very good schemes but you don’t deliver the result.”
(Gives example of education) and says that
“Pratham brings out a report every year and saw that 37% percent of children in class 5 cannot read a text for class 2. Now if you say that therefore the benefits are not reaching the target population, in a sense you are right. But what can the government do? It sets up schools, it highers teachers… we say that you need to have more parent-teacher involvement, you must have local communities enforcing accountability, techers must be made to teach.
These are things that are not just done by governments, these are things done by social pressure, social awareness, social mobilization and it would not surpeise me that it takes time.
It is not true that nothing is happening, lots is happening! “
The idea of bringing together the partners in the capital of Bulgaria in our attempt to create a mutual ground for cultural exchanges and reinforced partnership proved to be most beneficial.
The team coordinating the event managed to establish a learning mind-set, ideas-open, creative environment, while resolving aspects related to project coordination in the context of cultural expectation, further planning and technical steps. Several discussion themes to acknowledge, most notably – the role of the Eastern European partners in reaching the local authorities and participating in the policy making process, attracting the media and local actors to support further steps in cooperation for development.
The element of diversity turns out to be the key ingredient in expanding and strengthening the European Union, its global role and significant effort for implementing the MDGs. In the context of Eugad event in Sofia, understanding the impact of cultural differences, cross-cultural management skills and positive cross-cultural working relationships were just a few lessons to mention.
Incidentally, encouraging representation of Rroma ethnic minority in contemplating new venues to work together has generated significant ideas on participation in shaping the local policies for social inclusion and improved education system with long-term impact on modern European society.
Attitude towards managerial style – a consequence of cultural expectations. While promoting a rather flexible and open approach, in the attempt of encouraging initiative and creativity among the partners in implementing the project, the need for closer communication and guidance has been identified during the partnership meeting in Bulgaria.
In our effort to raise cultural awareness and enable us to communicate effectively across national cultures, our partners workshop meeting was meant and succeeded to stimulate our beyond-self-culture personal curiosity and consequently sets the ground for us to work more effectively with our counterparts from neighbor cultures.
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The idea of bringing together the partners in the capital of Bulgaria in our attempt to create a mutual ground for cultural exchanges and reinforced partnership proved to be most beneficial.
