From Eugad wiki

Last update of this report: 23 March 2010

Description

1.1. Name of beneficiary of grant contract: Armadilla scs onlus
1.2. Name and title of the Contact person: Mr. Vincenzo Pira
1.3. Name of partners in the Action: Italy - Municipality of Grosseto, Fondazione Labos, UCIIM; Bulgaria - Time foundation, Children of Europe, ERCEQ, NASMB; TEHNE (Romania), EUE – AISBL (Belgium), Kautilya Society (India), SIA (Syria).
1.4. Title of the Action: European Citizens working for the global development agenda
1.5. Contract number: DCI-NSA ED/2008/153-791
1.6. Start date and end date of the reporting period : 1st March 2009 to 28th February 2010
1.7. Target country(ies) or region(s): Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Belgium, Italy
1.8. Final beneficiaries &/or target groups (if different) (including numbers of women and men): no difference with oiginal plan.

The primary target groups are opinion makers who directly participate in the activities of this action: (i) 80 persons participating in 4 network building workshops (in Italy, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania); (ii) Associations of stakeholders involved in the network building activities; (iii) 100 opinion makers who will participate in capacity building activities.
The secondary target groups are those who will be reached and will benefit from the knowledge resources, information tools and media products created, collected and produced by this action; (i) The opinion makers of target countries who will benefit from the manuals and other resources made available through the Action web site and promoted through the networking and dissemination activities; (ii) the EU public reached indirectly through the distribution of the media products of this Action.

1.9. Country(ies) in which the activities take place (if different from 1.7) Where TV documentaries will be shot (Mozambique, Malawi, Botswana, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Syria, India and may be others).

Assessment of Implementation of Action Activities

Note: In order to ensure transparency of this action this report is being published also on the project web site. See www.eugad.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Action_progress_report_%28latest%29. All the links of this report are active and direct the reader to the referred documents. Some of these documents as been included as annexes to the present document (see List of enclosed document to the Action progress report)

Executive Summary

This is the interim report of the project titled: European Citizens working for the global development agenda. (EUGAD). It is an ambitious project with challenging objectives, uses an innovative approach and and involves the participation of new development actors.

The objective of EUGAD is to create, collect and distribute knowledge resources for enabling public opinion makers (educators, media, local authorities, development actors) to improve communication and dialogue on International Cooperation for Development. This objective was conceived as a response to the declining level of public support in Europe for policies in favour of developing nations.

Duration: 24 months
The Activities conducted in the first year and continuing in the second year are:

Networking and consultations for sharing resources and best practices and generating international and cross-sectoral synergies on how to inform the EU public about international cooperation agenda.
Developing three manuals to address the capacity gap among the primary target groups.
Producing an eight-episode documentary on the eight Millennium Development Goals.

Activities that will be started in the second year are:

Disseminating three manuals.
CB Workshops.
Broadcasting an eight-episode documentary on the eight Millennium Development Goals.
Promoting, amongst the wider networks of educationists, media personnel and local government policy makers in EU, the utilization of the knowledge resources and awareness building tools developed in the Action.

There has been no change in project scope and all activities are on schedule; however some tasks are delayed and the achievement of some milestones are being achieved with some delay. This is also evident from the budget spent that is equal to €291.540,10 i.e. € 59.707,86 less than originally foretasted. However this does not impacct the critical path and delay will be recovered in the second year.

There are no unexpected issues and the challenges encountered are those expected by the challenging objectives that the project has undertaken to reach. The main challenges we are facing are:

To motivate action stakeholders to join our network at a time when the political atmosphere is gloomy, citizens have become dispassionate with major policy ideals and nationalism is back in the old fashion of recrimination and hostility;
To manage a team largely comprising actors who are not experienced professionals of International Cooperation projects and are thus not accustomed to the jargon of development experts;
To coordinate an action team of partners belonging to 6 different Countries and operating in 4 very different cultural set ups: West Europe, East Europe, Middle East and South Asia.

The project failed to keep on board all the initial 13 partners. One partner (Labos, from Italy) has been unable to cope with the project challenges and has been removed from the team. Another partner (Erceq, from Bulgaria) has not yet been able to be integrated with the rest of the team. In the second year the partners who have been more successful in completing their assignments will train and support those who are struggling with it. There have been 19 organizations that have become contributing partners to the project (complete list in www.eugad.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Partners).
Other major achievements have been distance coordination and reciprocal support among partners, the participated process of manual and script writing and the involvement of RAI (Italian television) as a contributor.

Except the capacity building workshop scheduled for February 2010 and postponed to May 2010 all expected results for the first year have been achieved, viz.

11 network workshops conducted;
1 round table conducted;
web site designed and developed
stakeholder consultations conducted for participated and informed processes of manual writing,
Information collected and uploaded on the Web site;
draft version of the manuals prepared
treatment of the documentary prepared.
documentary shooting in progress in target countries,
Constant process of internal Monitoring and Evaluation with transparent communication through the action web site.

On December 2009 we have submitted a request for budget modification for which approval is pending. This will mainly have an impact on the available resources for the documentary. Therefore some shooting is being postponed so that it can be planned according the available resources.

Activities

Activities snapshot

The Action Plan of EUGAD moves through three sequential yet parallel phases:

Networking, i.e. forming a partnership with persons and organizations that agree with Eugad mission and would like to share a line of vision and action.
Creating: at EUGAD we are making video documentaries, manuals, animating this web site, organizing events and delivering other media products to animate the network created and deepen the dialogue.
Disseminating: along with all EUGAD partners we want to invite others to this process of dialogue and share the knowledge we have collected and produced.

more details in ⇒ "Presentation of Eugad activities and expected results"

The first year of the Action was dedicated to building a stakeholder network in each partner country that would be proactive in contributing to producing the three main outputs of the project - manuals, web portal and documentaries. The activity of networking included (i) network building workshops; (ii) stakeholder consultations in order to understand communication needs and gaps; (iii) resource mapping. The results of these activities have been posted on the project portal. The salient issues and ideas emerging from each of the above activities has been included in the manuals.

Here bolow we give a more extensive report of the activities conducted and quoted with teh same numbering of plan enclosed in the contract.. All support docomentation is posted on the web site and is accessible through the hypertextual links.

Initial Activities

The project started on the fist of March 2009. As per the action plan, the start up activities were to be implemented, (Section 1.9.), in the first month of the project. However, it was only in Month 2 that the partners were able to decide on a mutually acceptable date for the kick off meetings.

In Month 1, the Applicant presented the project to its members and reviewed the budget with the organisational board. It also organised the project team and discussed the project, its activities and expected impact and budget lines. In Italy, the Applicant also informed made its first contact with the Italian partners in order to share information and divide tasks and responsibility among themselves.

Two kick off meetings were held, one in Bulgaria and one in Romania. The meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria was attended by local partners - TIME foundation, Children of Europe and NASMB, EUE which is the Belgian partner, the project coordinator and a representative from Armadilla. The meeting in Bucharest, Romania was attended by the local partner TEHNE, the representatives from the applicant and the Belgian partner EUE.

During this meeting:

Project document was discussed in order to ensure a common and reciprocal understanding among partners on activities, timelines, results and impacts;
Partners discussed how they would share the networking responsibilities among each other so as to ensure that all stakeholder categories were represented for purposed of feedbacks into and dissemination of Action products.
Modalities were discussed for efficient distance management of and coordination among partners located in 6 different countries. The partners also discussed their current projects and local stakeholder networks that could be potentially involved in the project and tapped for more information in the sectors of project interest. The partners were asked to identify opportunities for capitalization on results of other similar Actions and for synergies with similar initiatives The project schedule was elaborated and criteria was discussed for selecting stakeholders for the networking and capacity building activities. The partners also discussed the budget so as to better allocate their tasks and select people and other resources who would be dedicated to the project.

see ⇒ Minutes of the Kick Off Meeting Held in Sofia and Bucharest, April 2009

Since the project would have been largely managed at a distance and only a few meetings between partners were envisaged in the projects, it was decided that the first tasks would be to:

make clear distribution of tasks and responsibilities among partners in line with their specific competence and role in their civil society networks
develop templates and documents that would ensure utilization of standard processes and outputs during the implementation of activities and facilitate the distance management of and coordination among partners.
create web spaces (for eg. google groups, google calendar) for sharing resources and facilitating communication among partners

The Applicant worked, through Month 2 and 3, in collaboration with partners, to elaborate the essential documents and templates that facilitate coordination among partners and ensure efficient and effective activity implementation. see ⇒ guidelines on networking activity.

These include:

Partnership agreements
Eugad (presentation of the Action)
Sub-division of tasks among partners
Action Gantt
Guidelines, among others included guidelines for Networking Activities, Stakeholder identification, conducting and uploading interviews on wiki, visibility, linking networking and interview results to the Manual, making partner profiles, improving overall project communication, Reporting and Payments, conducting interviews;
Templates for administrative reporting (expense claims, time sheets, salary receipts, employee contracts) and activity specific reporting (monthly reports, time sheets, sign up sheets, resource mapping report, stakeholder interview report)
Administrative and financial requirement procedures

see ⇒ Management of Eugad project.

ACTIVITY LINE 1 - Networking to share resources and best practices and generate international and cross-sectoral synergies on how to inform the EU public about international cooperation agenda

As per the Action Plan, network building was the first activity undertaken by the Action partners.

The purpose of networking at EUGAD was to create a trans national network among development actors and key stakeholders for sharing resources, opinions and best practices and for generating international and cross-sectoral synergies in education for development. The members of Eugad network wanted to contribute to empowering European citizens so that they could make informed judgments about the role that the European Commission and National Governments in Europe are taking in order to contribute to the global partnership for Development.

The Eugad approach aims at involving project stakeholders in a process of dialogue and cooperation for producing and utilizing the project outputs (more in ⇒ consultations).

The network events are an important part of Eugad networking activities. They constitute occasions of personal meeting between people who otherwise intercat mainly through the web site and the media products.

Networking at Eugad has proceeded through the following steps:

identification of possible partners;
consultation with partners that include:

dialogue with the partners,
facing the issues dealt in the manuals
identification of further areas of cooperation in Eugad action;

then, on the basis of the result of consultations, the activities have started to proceed to implementing synergies:

utilization of the knowledge produced in the dialogue for the preparation of the manuals and other project outputs,
preparing action plans in the cooperation areas identified
dissemination of the results and extension of the network created.

Identifying project stakeholders was done according to Guidelines on identification and analysis of action stakeholders. The partners used templates developed by the Applicant for Stakeholder Identification and compiling stakeholder lists: Stakeholder_Categories.doc ; Stakeholders_list.doc.
The details of the activities of networking carried out by each partner are available on the Web Site ⇒ Reports of the Networking Activities, that include:

Report on the results obtained by the activity of Networking in Bulgaria by Children of Europe

Report on the results obtained by the activity of Networking in Bulgaria by Time Foundation

Report on the results obtained by the activity of Networking in Bulgaria by NASMB

Organising Network Building Workshops (Activity 1.1.1.)

The network building events were an important part of EUGAD networking activities for officially presenting the work of network creation and launching the consultations amongst partner organizations. These constituted occasions of meeting between people who otherwise interacted mainly through mails, the web site and the media products.

As per the Action grant application, four Networking workshops were to be held, one each in Italy, Belgium, Romania and Bulgaria. However, in Italy and Bulgaria, initial network building workshops were followed up by smaller workshops that were organised in order to outreach more stakeholders and deepen the relationship with a selected few. Thus, a total number of 10 Network Building Workshops and/or Events were conducted; 5 in Bulgaria, 3 in Italy and one each in Romania and Belgium.
The purpose of the 4 workshops organized in Italy, Belgium, Romania annd Bulgaria is to officialy present the work of network creation and launch the consultations amongst the partner organizations.

Reports of the workshop in Italy

Report of the workshop in Belgium
Report of the workshop in Romania,
See tReports of the workshop in Bulgaria

Organising Round Table in Italy (Activity 1.1.2.)

The Round Table originally scheduled to take place in Rome was organised in Grosseto because the role of the Municipality of Grosseto was greater than originally conceived. More people than originally expected (2 more people from Bulgaria and one more person from India) intervened in the Round Table. However, no person from Syria participated as they were not granted the Italian VISA on time. This round table was also attended by the EC external monitor who met the partners and discussed the activities and challenges with the. The monitoring report was shared with the Action partners

See the see invitation and the report of the Round Table

As a follow up of the Round Table the Comune of Grosseto organised a Conference Dall'identità all'identità - in October 2009.

Collecting information through web based surveys (Activity 1.2.1.)

Through web based surveys, Action partners are collecting information and other knowledge resources aimed at facilitating European opinion makers in understanding the challenges of Global Partnerships for Development so that they can better inform their target audiences.

The Eugad partners carrying out this task prepare a "Resource Mapping Report" that lists out the resources that they have identified, gives additional information about Case Studies and describes relevant examples of Good practices and Bad Practices. The results and reports of the resource mapping exercise are still being updated and are available on the Web site:

These resources are also being integrated in the Manual and the Documentaries and are available on the Eugad Web Site as follows:

Creating a Portal and Web based community (Activity 1.2.2.)

The EUGAD Web Site and portal has been designed, developed and published. The portal is a a web based community and a virtual working environment for media professionals, policy makers and educators on how to inform the EU public about the international cooperation agenda and global partnerships established to this end. It is the communication tool supporting the networking and knowledge sharing activities.

The web portal is the communication tool supporting the networking and knowledge sharing activities.
It is used:

at the beginning of the action by the partners promoting the network and the stakeholders who will join it, for consultation in the preparation of Action outputs and for collecting and sharing knowledge resources and tools; (functional to the achievement of Result 1.1)
at a later stage, for giving wider access to the knowledge resources collected and created (manuals, documentaries) and for disseminating the lessons learned in the Action.

Eugad.eu site is divided into 2 main areas:

www.eugad.eu that is the "official site" or the "front stage" of the team work;
and www.eugad.eu/wiki that is the "writing lab" or "back stage" of the team work dedicate to for the preparation of all Eugad outputs.

All outputs at EUGAD are produced in cooperation amongst all Eugad partners. The WIKI platform has been adopted as a form of collaborative writing. Collaborative writing has the advantage of enabling all stakeholders to contribute to the project. However this has required a considerable amount of coordination work amongst the partners. Editing and finalizing the texts also requires a high level of effort. As consequence of this effort the final result however is a product quality that could not be achieved by single or small group authorship.

The wiki now is Up and running and stored more than 500 articles and adopted the standard monobook skin of the other wiki for more performance and implementation of the stable extension . A massive work has been done in describing all the phases of networking activities and in uploading the main contribution of the stakeholders in the form of interviews and reports. See:

The Wiki has been used also as a coordination tool. The tasks has been listed out in the Partner Profiles and for the main tasks guidelines have been specified. At present there are 15 guidelines which explain in very detailed information how the required activity must be carried out and how it must then be described in the Wiki.

The BLOG platform is used for the external access; it is also referred to as the "official" of the "front-stage" site. However even in the "front stage" there are windows where users can see over the "back-stage" or the labs of the work-in-progress. Not even this is a "static" site because even in the front-stage collaborative work is going on in various forms (comments, etc.) However here, unlike in the WIKI environment, all pages have received an " imprimatur ", i.e. the recognition by the site managers that contributions displayed are in line with Eugad objectives and Eugad expected quality standards.
Besides the Home Page (also called the entrance Room) there are different environment (or rooms) where users have a different kind of relationship with the Eugad team.

In the Labs viewers can have a glance upon the work-in-progress; we see here the team working and their draft outputs.
The Library is the access to the WIKI platform from the Blog Platform
The News are the updates upon the project activities and results; also reference to activities of synergic projects, other important events and links to other source of information useful for the team and the network. News can be commented by the registered users. Each news also is posted on the Eugad Facebook Page which allows Eugad's facebook subscribers to add informal comments and easily share the news with others.
Newsletter: Every 2 weeks the Eugad team publishes a newsletter with updates of the work in progress at Eugad, indicates the most important additions to the documentations collected and highlights the most important upcoming events. (see all previous issues.
Calendar. Based on the Google platform the Calendar the Eugad agenda is on display. It is updated regularly in accordance to the milestones achieved and expected. In the the agenda items there have links (on the WIKI) to the relevant resources and outputs of the event. The Agenda that displays the events externally is also used as a tool for internal communication and team management.

These are the different levels to which a viewer of the EUGAD site gradually becomes a user, a contributor and finally a partner.

Becomes a regular user:
- subscribes to the newsletter;
- becomes a "fan" of the Eugad page in Facebook
Contributes
- Posts comments in the BLOG pages in the seminar rooms or in the news
- Writes notes on the wall of the Facebook page.
- Contributes to Wiki pages
- Shares knowledge resources, tools or practices.
Becomes a partner
- Prepares Articles or New WIKI pages
- Takes a role in the preparation of new projects
- Contributes to sharing project outputs and dissemination of project results.

The quality of the Site is measured by its ability to attract the viewer and move lead her/him from "viewer" to "user" and contributor". The impact of the project will be measured by how many contributors become partners.

More details in:

Evaluation of the user ability, the effectiveness and the impact of web site (Activity 1.2.3.)

The Web Site Development Report illustrates the results of the contant evaluation process. The quality of the Site is measured by its ability to attract the viewer and move lead her/him from "viewer" to "user" and contributor". The impact of the project will be measured by how many contributors become partners.
For details see ⇒ The Web Site Development Progress Report

ACTIVITY LINE 2 - Developing and disseminating Manuals

Stakeholder consultations for participated and informed processes of manual writing (Activity 2.1.1)

Rounds of consultations have been conducted with stakeholders and are still being done so as to receive feedbacks for developing the manuals and for the potential inclusion of some stakeholders in the documentaries and wiki pages. These consultations have also taken the shape of interviews according to procedures indicated in http://groups.google.com/group/eugad-team/web/interview-steps. The results of the interviews are utilised to:

update the partner profile following the Guidelines for describing partner organizations.
create a contributor profile for the person who was interviewed;
upload the text of the interview according to guidelines and extrapolate the most relevant ideas contributing to the analysis of the Action issues.
Insert the interview highlights in the relevant chapters of the manuals according to guidelines

As of now, 45 Interviews have been recorded and updated on the project wiki (see list of the interviews). The interviews constitute (along with networking events) an important basis of the continuation process. They have been uploaded on the wiki. Issues emerging from these interviews have been linked with the chapters of the Manuals. These interviews have also provided inputs for the preparation of the documentaries. The interviews have made it possible to make the relationship with partners effective in order to map and collect knowledge resources and examples of good practices.

Stakeholder Interview Reports have been uploaded on the wiki and are available on:

More in ⇒ How the interviews have been used as resources for the preparation of the Manual

Writing and editing three manuals (Activity 2.1.2.)

Work is under way for preparing the three Manuals that illustrate how to integrate development issues into education and information activities and provide indications on how to utilize the knowledge resources made available through the Web Portal. The information, data analysis, findings, recommendations, etc. collected and compiled in the networking activity are being utilised to develop the Manuals. These Manuals are prepared through a process of stakeholder consultations on the project issues. The articles on the EUGAD Blog and their feedbacks will also be integrated into the Manuals. See the ⇒ draft index of the Manuals.

Organizing and conducting 2 workshops for training 100 persons - one each in Bulgaria and Romania (Activity 2.2.)

Not started. Sheduled to start on May 2010

ACTIVITY LINE 3 - Producing and Broadcasting an eight-episode documentary on Millennium Development Goals

Producing an eight-episode documentary on the MDGs. (Activity 3.1.)

Script writing and pre-production of the documentaries is also under way. Actual shooting has started in January 2010 in India and in Syria. Two sub-contract for Video Production and one for Video Editing have been awarded and work is in progress.

An agreement has been reached with RAI, the Italian State Television, the EUGAD associated partner, is actively supporting the Action and a team from RAI will accompany the EUGAD team through its production in the field.
For more details see the ⇒ index of work in progress for the documentaries, that include

Broadcasting and distributing the eight-episode documentary in partner countries through television channels and among target groups (Activity 3.2.)

Not started

ACTIVITY LINE 4 - Promoting, amongst the wider networks of educationists, media personnel and local government policy makers in EU, the utilisation of the knowledge resources and awareness building tools developed in the Action

Utilizing the created network for promoting and disseminating resources produced by the Action (Activity 4.1.)

Not formally starte, even if some work is under way throgh the newsletters and the Fcebook page

Organizing and conducting a final workshop where the action results are evaluated and further strategies are agreed upon. (Activity ctivity 4.2. )

not started

ACTIVITY LINE 5 - Monitoring and Evaluation

Project Implementation Control and Internal Evaluation

Internal team monitoring and evaluation is a constant ongoing process. Note: In order to ensure transparency of this action this report is being published also on the project web site. See www.eugad.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Action_progress_report_%28latest%29. See the complete list of self-M&E reports.

Eugad news are also used for internal monitoring and peer-to-peer tasks reviews.

External Monitoring Support

The Round Table held at Grosseto, Italy, on September 21 and 22, 2009, was attended by the EUGAD partners and by Mr Andronicos Phylactopoulos who represented the ICCS-NTUA (GR), a contractor of the European Commission for external Results-Oriented Monitoring (ROM). This monitoring mission "is an independent reporting mechanism, preparing and submitting status reports and analytical assessments of the project management with the objective of (i) allowing a rapid appreciation in project progress towards the achievement expected results and the contribution of the set objectives; (ii) enabling focused project management decisions in order to allow adjustments to be made with minimal disruption and ensure that projects remain on course and reach their objectives." In Grosseto, the external monitor had the opportunity of holding a number bilateral meetings with the project Partners.

Although the monitoring mission arrived at an early stage of action implementation, it attempted to measure the outcomes, i.e. the expected changes occurring as a direct consequence of the project. In his briefing with the Action coordinator, Mr. Phylactopoulos gave general suggestions and recommendations that have been considered and followed up by the Action team:

Below is the list of the suggestions provided by the Monitor (and of the ⇒ actions taken in line with the suggestions)

to record the outcome of the Grosseto Round Table in a short document, addressing the issues raised for the way forward, and to circulate it to all partners in order to establish a consensus; done ⇒ Report of the Round Table (Grosseto) and Evaluation of the Round Table (Grosseto);
to finalise the project partnerships so that allocation of responsibilities could be decided firmly; done ⇒ Fixing the allocation of specific responsibilities for consultation and networking;
to update and detail the work plan and ensure that each partner has a corresponding work plan; done ⇒ Give visibility to the work you are doing and the links, available on this page, to the partner pages;
to establish, to the extent possible, the quantifiable OVIs (Objectively Verifiable Indicators) and update the Logical Framework Matrix; ⇒ not done as it was not cleared the purpouse for this kind of project; we prefere to adopt a more dialogic and partecipated approach to M&E.
to describe the procedures of cooperation and establish regular partner teleconferences; ⇒ besides skype conferences for regular internal comunication we are using the Eugad page on Facebook;
to inform the EC Task Manager about the project progress, request approval for the updated work plan and clarify questions on administrative issues. ⇒ Following the advice of the Monitor, a meeting was organized in Brussels between Stefano De Santis on the behalf of Armadilla (the Action leader) and Ms. Marie-Claire BRENARD-TOMASI (Unité F1 - Relations avec la société civile, gestion centralisée du programme thématique ANE-AL sous ICD et coordination) where project issues were discussed.

The Action team received the Monitoring report on November 30, 2009. The recommendations in the report are very useful and will guide the corrective measures to be taken by the Applicant and the project partners in order to ensure relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of the proejct.

The report largely contains the evaluation of the design and the quality of the Logical Framework Matrix- logframe - presented in the project proposal and expresses some ex-ante judgments on the likelihood of impact and sustainability on the basis of the assessment of the size and the previous experiences of the Partner Organizations. It has not considered the experience and the professional competence of the experts. The Action issues have been identified and listed well in the report but there seems to be some confusion between the policy issues and cultural issues that the action is tackling (i.e. the problems concerning which the Action wants to have a positive impact and which were the reasons for conception of the Action objectives) and the issues emerging from project implementation (i.e. the managerial challenges that the Applicant is facing with the team). The monitoring report has not analysed whether the milestones were achieved according to the envisaged timelines, has not expressed a view on the consistency of the deliverables and has not compared the quality of the outputs produced with the quality expected in the action proposal.

Monitoring report summaries: 1; 2; Full Monitoring report.

List of questions asked by Eugad Team to the Monitoring Agency

Activities planned but not implemented

All activities are being implemented. There has been no change in project scope and all activities are on schedule.

However some tasks are delayed and the achievement of some milestones are being achieved with some delay. This is also evident from the budget spent that is equal to €291.540,10 i.e. € 59.707,86 less than originally foretasted. However this does not impact the critical path and delay will be recovered in the second year.

Activity 3.2., i.e. Broadcasting and distributing the eight-episode documentary in partner countries through television channels and among target groups has not yet started although it was scheduled that some portions of the documentary would have been broadcast through the web site. Editing work of the documentaries is under way and broadcasting will probably start at the end of April 2010.

Activity 2.2. , i.e. organizing and conducting 2 workshops for training 100 persons - one each in Bulgaria and Romania was scheduled to start in February 2010 but has been rescheduled in May 2010.

The reasons for the delay is mainly in the challenge of insufficient partner experience and capacity in global partnerships for development which diverted resources and work from more experiences partners towards tutoring and supporting less experienced ones.

Assessment of Results

Except the capacity building workshop scheduled for February 2010 and postponed to May 2010 all expected results for the first year have been achieved, viz.

11 network workshops conducted;
1 round table conducted;
web site designed and developed
stakeholder consultations conducted for participated and informed processes of manual writing,
Information collected and uploaded on the Web site;
draft version of the manuals prepared
treatment of the documentary prepared.
documentary shooting in progress in target countries,
Constant process of internal Monitoring and Evaluation with transparent communication through the action web site.

By enabling public opinion makers (educationists and media) to raise awareness of the stakes of Global Partnership for Development, Eugad expected outcome is to contribute to increasing, in the EU public, a sense of responsibility for the peoples of developing countries. We hope that, if the project is successful, the long term impact will be more pressure on policy makers to implement international agreements aimed at reducing poverty and at establishing fairer relations between developed and developing countries.

The outputs have started being used by the beneficiaries and other project stakeholders. We are witnessing an increase in capacity and awareness among the opinion makers who are participating to Eugad activities and availing of the draft outputs. In the Municipalities involved we have seen the motivation and capacity of of local communities to be part of development activities and participate to the creation of new projects, some of these directly in synergy with Eugad ongoing activities. (see Lab of new projects)

However it is still early to evaluate how the empowered stakeholders are better enable to contribute to solving the problems identified, leading to the achievement of project objectives. We can assess that after the main products (manuals, documentary and web site) will be finalized and distributed and capacity building workshops completed..

No unforeseen positive or negative results has been recorded. There has been no change in project scope and all activities are on schedule; however some tasks are delayed and the achievement of some milestones are being achieved with some delay. This is also evident from the budget spent that is equal to EUR 288.532 , i.e. EUR 62.715 less than originally foretasted. However this does not impact the critical path and delay will be recovered in the second year.

There are no unexpected issues and the challenges encountered are those expected by the challenging objectives that the project has undertaken to reach. We were aware of the risks of not properly addressing from the very beginning the expected project challenges; the risk prevention and mitigating steps have worked so far, with the minor negative impact of losing one partner of the consortium and of delays of the production of some project outcome. The expanded partnership and the stretched out time-lines make it possible to cope successfully with these minor failures. The main challenges we are facing are:

To motivate action stakeholders to join our network at a time when the political atmosphere is gloomy, citizens have become dispassionate with major policy ideals and nationalism is back in the old fashion of recrimination and hostility;
To manage a team largely comprising actors who are not experienced professionals of International Cooperation projects and are thus not accustomed to the jargon of development experts;
To coordinate an action team of partners belonging to 6 different Countries and operating in 4 very different cultural set ups: West Europe, East Europe, Middle East and South Asia.

1. The first challenge is surely the most difficult one: but at the same time it is the very reason why this kind of project is needed. The distance of the European Citizens from the Policy ideas of a more united and a more internationally committed Europe is also due to the lack of capacity by EU institutions to gain the trust of opinion leaders (see project background). There have been many instances of practices, in the past, of talking highly of human values just for the sake of getting public money. So, there is a good deal of skepticism that we have to contrast in order to make people believe that it is possible to do things differently. We are taking more time and effort to get people and organizations on board. But once they come on board, there is a growing sense of enthusiasm that makes people feel like saying “yes, this time something is happening for real”. So, we are gradually picking up the delays and setting an optimistic feeling for things to come.

2. The second challenge is the typical one derived from the position of EuropeAid that on the one hand wants to expand its activities beyond the development initiatives and involve new actors from civil society and from new member countries; on the other hand, there is a very complex administrative mechanism and an elitist jargon that strongly discourages the participation of newcomers. Many partners are new to Europaid's procedures and expectations and find it difficult to understand the logic and philosophy behind Europaid's expectations, standards and procedural requirements. New partners lack sufficient experience and capacity in implementing projects of development cooperation, because they did not have previous experience with the philosophy and logic of the European Commission. Only two partners (Applicant and the Indian partner) have varied and wide experience in the development sector and have had to guide the others through every step of the project. This has included developing guidelines for implementing tasks and writing related reports, supervising the quality of documents produced by partners and providing feedbacks and guidance. These responsibilities fell on the applicant since who had the most experience in the sector and has led to extension of time-lines in implementing the first year activities. The experts in the project team, who are experienced sector specific professionals, continue to translate their expertise into indications and support (including mentoring) for those who are new to this experience. A good deal of effort has been required in order to gain speed and give the required push for the project to take off. The coordinators are facilitated, to some extent, by the fact that part of the outputs are inputs for manuals and the others are training resources and are thus being used as resources for internal as well as external capacity building.

3. In order to facilitate coordination, the applicant had to dedicate time and resources for producing Internet based tools, for e.g. google groups, google calendar, wiki pages and for developing templates and guidelines for every activity. We are facilitated in tackling the third challenge by the fact that, among the outputs, we have the communication and knowledge management portal. But more important than the communication tool, is the positive communication climate that has gradually and steadily been developing in the team as a collective response to the other two challenges. Besides utilizing the web portal and the closed team group web space, we have started a Facebook group and regular Skype conferences to facilitate horizontal communication, i.e. free and un-moderated exchange of views amongst partners and contributors. See more at Eugad on Facebook.

Due to the above challenges, the activities of networking, consultations and survey, that were to be factored into the manuals and documentaries, took longer than expected. This has delayed the finalization of the production tasks of documentaries and manuals to the second year.
No contracts (works, supplies, services) above 10.000€ was awarded for the implementation of the action during the reporting period.

On December 2009 we have submitted a request for budget modification for which approval is pending. We already implemented some of the changes we have announced, but we did not exceed the limits of the changes that can be done without prior approval.

Updated action plan

Duration: 24 months
The Activities conducted in the first year and continuing in the second year are:

Networking and consultations for sharing resources and best practices and generating international and cross-sectoral synergies on how to inform the EU public about international cooperation agenda.
Developing three manuals to address the capacity gap among the primary target groups.
Producing an eight-episode documentary on the eight Millennium Development Goals.

Activities that will be started in the second year are:

Disseminating three manuals.
Broadcasting an eight-episode documentary on the eight Millennium Development Goals.
Promoting, amongst the wider networks of educationists, media personnel and local government policy makers in EU, the utilization of the knowledge resources and awareness building tools developed in the Action.

There has been no change in project scope and all activities are on schedule; however some tasks are delayed and the achievement of some milestones are being achieved with some delay. This is also evident from the budget spent that is equal to EUR 288.532 , i.e. EUR 62.715 less than originally foretasted. However this does not impact the critical path and delay will be recovered in the second year.

On December 2009 we have submitted a request for budget modification for which approval is pending. This will mainly have an impact on the available resources for the documentary. Therefore some shooting is being postponed so that it can be planned according the available resources.We realized that the production of the outputs (especially documentaries) would require more resources than what was foreseen in the proposed project budget. This is because audiovisual products were found to be necessary for supporting stakeholder consultation and networking in the second year. At the same time, we also realized that we could put less time in the second year for the coordination of activities. Therefore, a budget reduction in terms of personnel costs (coordination, administrative and support staff) and a budget increase for documentary production has been requested from Europaid. In order to support video production, we have increased the amount of money used for video production and editing, in particular for the rent of a professional video camera, traveling and per diem costs related to people who will participate in the production of documentaries, such as the personnel of the Italian Television (RAI), the associated partner who has shown its interest in sending its professional personnel to support the work of the EUGAD partners.

See revised action plan

Partners and other Co-operation

Besides the original consortium partners that are (in alphabetical order):

Armadilla (applicant), Italy.
Children of Europe, Bulgaria.
Erceq , Bulgaria
European Union Experts – AISBL, Belgium.
Kautilya Society for intercultural dialogue, India
Municipality of Grosseto, Italy.
UCIIM,Italy
National Association of Small and Medium Business, Bulgaria.
Syrian International Academy, Syria
TEHNE- Centre for Innovation and Development in Education, Romania
Time foundation. Bulgaria.

more organizations have became partners contributing to EUGAD activities and supporting the creation of a wider network. ⇒ See all Eugad Partners

RAI (the italian Television) is an Associate partner that is actively contributing to project activities.

Assessment of Relationship between Action partners

The project failed to keep on board all the initial 13 partners. One partner (Labos, from Italy) has been unable to cope with the project challenges and has been removed from the team. Another partner (Erceq, from Bulgaria) has not yet been able to be integrated with the rest of the team. In the second year the partners who have been more successful in completing their assignments will train and support those who are struggling with it. Since these partners belong to the same category of project beneficiaries, the difficulties encountered have actually represented the test ground for the team for creating those knowledge resources that will be later shared to all. And the difficulties that these motivated partners have encountered was a verification of the need for the tools and resources that the project is creating and distributing.

There have been 19 organizations that have become contributing partners to the project (complete list in www.eugad.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Partners).
Other major achievements have been distance coordination and reciprocal support among partners, the participated process of manual and script writing and the involvement of RAI (Italian television) as a contributor.

LABOS has been unable to shift from a work mentality of a service contract (it is habituated to providing consultancy to the Italian Government and LAs) to a mentality of a grant receiver. It has been unwilling to enter in the spirit of the Action and the methodology of task implementation and it has been dragging Armadilla into long negotiations. Labos has not been able to harmonize and synergize its organizational objectives and work methodology with that of the Action proposal. LABOS has not agreed to abide by the conditions of and tasks and responsibilities assigned to it in the partnership agreement. Armdilla is not longer trying to keep Labos on board. The Kautilya Society and Armadilla are taking over the responsibilities of LABOS that deal mainly with exploring and identifying synergies with other projects and actors and developing strategies for the sustainability of the Action.

ERCEQ has expressed its desire to be a Partner but has been unable to overcome the difficulties of distance communication. Its capacity to use e-mail and the wiki is minimal and its willingness to learn has not been demonstrated so far. The applicant has also suggested to ERCEQ the possibility of participating as a stakeholder. At present, its professional role in the project is being covered by the other three Bulgarian partners. In the second year they will train and support Erceq in taking a full partnership role.

UCIIM in Italy is on board of the project as a stakeholder but has not yet appointed a professional to undertake the practical tasks. UCIIM has been positive in spirit but slow in responding to communications by the Applicant and has expressed its difficulty in actively participating, in the project, as a partner at the level of a professional contributor. We have arrived to an agreement that UCIIM will remain a strategic stakeholder: in the first year UCIIM has been a beneficiary of the project activities; in the second year it will be involved as a fully active partner.

In the Monitoring, the CMTP ROM Mission recommended that "the lead partner has to finalise any outstanding partnerships (by possibly eliminating the input from some of them) and that "all partners should contribute towards the development of this material in accordance to their expertise.

In order to tackle these issues it has been decided that less resources will be dedicated to coordination and administration and that more resources will be directed towards the generation of outputs (especially video production), thereby increasing the effectiveness and impact of the project activities.

Each active partner have submitted their own reports of the activities they have been implementing. Click on the Hypertexts in order to access the Partners profile and their reports

Armadilla: Analysis of Italian Stakeholders' Needs - indication for the Manual Authors; Report on the results obtained by the activity of Networking in Italy; Report on Resource Mapping in Italy

European Union Experts – AISBL: Report on the results obtained by the activity of Networking in Belgium; Indications for the Manual authors on the basis of stakeholders interviews and meetings held by EUE

Assessment of relationship between your organisation and State authorities in Action countries

There has not been until now any formal relationship between Eugad management and the State authorities in the Action countries. However some decision makers policy planners in italy, Syria and India have been involved on a personal level in the consultation process. Some of thenm have been interviewd and their interviews is being used in the manuals and in the documentaries.

Relationship with other organisations involved in Action implementation

RAI (the italian Television) is an Associate partner that is actively contributing to project activities.
Subcontracts: SOCECOS is an Indian Company that has been awarded a software contract for the Web Site for 10.000 EUR and another Contract for Post Production work for the Documentaries of 9.000 EUR. Other two Video Contracts have been awared to Samsara (India) for 7.627 EUR and Calcium Advertising (Lebanon) 7.590 EUR.

The Final Beneficiaries and Target groups are as per contract. (see the section "Description" of this report
Other third parties involved: donors, other government agencies and local government units and NGOs that are being consulted for manual writing and are being interviewed. See the list of interviews in www.eugad.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Interviews

Links and synergies with other actions

See in http://www.eugad.eu/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Action_progress_report_%28latest%29

Building upon previous EU grants

NA

Visibility

Visibility of the EU contribution being ensured in the Action by indicating the sponsorship of the EC in all project outputs and events in accordance with the Communication and Visibility Manual for EU External Actions.
We would welcome if the Commission wish to publicise the results of Actions. No objection to this report being published on EuropeAid Co-operation Office website.

Annexes

List of enclosed document to the Action progress report

Action progress report (latest)