From Eugad wiki

This report is being updated in March 2010 - See ⇒ the latest version

Main features of the Action

The objective of EUGAD is to create, collect, make accessible and distribute knowledge resources and tools for improving 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. The direct target groups of this Action are educators, media personnel and local government policy makers in Italy, Belgium, Romania and Bulgaria.

⇒ "Project background"; ⇒ "Project methodology" ⇒ "Project issues" ⇒ " Eugad stakeholders "

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 with others 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 in ⇒ "Activities and expected results"

The Partnership

The consortium members that started the project are (in alphabetical order) :

Armadilla (leader) ,Italy.
Children of Europe, Bulgaria.
European Union Experts – AISBL, Belgium.
Kautilya Society for intercultural dialogue, India
Municipality of Grosseto, 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.

⇒ See all Eugad Partners (including organizations that have become partners of the wider EUGAD Network)

EUGAD receives financial support by the European Commission External Cooperation Programme; it is one of the Actions that implement the Sub-Programme "Non state actors and local authorities" [1] - Section: Public awareness and education for development in Europe.

Checklist for partner inputs into Interim Report

Assessment of Implementation of Action Activities

Initial Activities

The project implementation began in March 2009. As per the Action work plan, initial activities were to start (Section 1.9. of the Grant application form), in the first month of the project. However, it was only in Month 2 that the partners were able to agree on a mutually acceptable date for the kick off meetings.

In Month 1, the Applicant shared the project with its board and staff and reviewed the budget. It also created the project team and discussed the activities, timelines, expected impact and the budget lines. In Italy, the Applicant contacted the Italian partners to share project information, divide tasks and responsibilities and agree on timelines.

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 were envisaged between partners, it was decided that the first task of the Applicant 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.

To this end, the Applicant and project partners worked in consultation through Month 2 and Month 3 to develop the following documents and templates and sign them off :

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 activity specific tasks
Administrative and financial requirements (task manager contracts, expense claims)

see ⇒ Management of Eugad project.

The activities implemented in the first year have been thus:

Networking for sharing resources and best practices and generating international and cross-sectoral synergies on how to inform the EU public about international cooperation agenda

(Activity Line 1)

The purpose of networking at EUGAD was to create a trans national network among development actors and key stakeholders for sharing resources, opinons 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.

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

Networking at Eugad has proceeded through the following steps:

identification of possible partners;
consultation with partners that includes:

dialogue with the partner;
addressing the issues dealt in the manuals;
identification of further areas of cooperation in Eugad action

then, on the basis of the result of consultations, proceed to implementing synergies in:

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

From Month 1 to 3, the applicant, in collaboration with partners, has elaborated the essential documents and templates that facilitate coordination and ensure efficient and effective activity implementation. see ⇒ guidelines on networking activity. From Month 3 to 8, the partners implemented the activities and produced the expected results.

For details of the tasks performed by each partner see ⇒ Reports of the Networking Activities.

Results of networking

10 Networking Events held (Result 1.1)

The network events are an important part of EUGAD networking activities. They constitute occasions of meeting between people who otherwise interact mainly through mails, the web site and the media products. In the Original Action Plan, four Networking workshops were envisaged in Italy, Belgium, Romania annd Bulgaria in order to officialy present the work of network creation and launch the consultations amongst partner organizations. In Italy and Belgium, besides the main scheduled workshops, more sub-events were organized in order to reach more stakeholders and deepen the relationship with them.

Reports of the 3 workshops organized in Italy, a Round Table and a Conference

Report of the workshop in Rome,
Report of the Sub-Workshop of Modena
Report of the Sub-Workshop of Lecce
Round Table (Grosseto) Report
Conference Dall'identità all'identità Grosseto Ottobre 2009

Report of the workshop in Belgium
Report of the workshop in Romania,
Reports of the 5 workshops Organized in Bulgaria

The Round Table originally scheduled to take place in Rome was organised in Grosseto because the role of the Municipality of Grosseto within the project is 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.

Web site and portal created (Result 1.2)

The EUGAD Web Site and portal has been designed and developed. It 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.

The Portal created includes:

a description of the Action partners and their activities,
a databank of the existing information resources on the relevant development issues, awareness building tools, toolkits and methodologies in this sector, case studies and best practices in development education;
a news-section and a newsletter + a mailing list.

The web portal is the communication tool supporting the networking and knowledge sharing activities.
It is presently used 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. Gradually, it will be used for giving wider access to the knowledge resources collected and created (manuals, documentaries) and for disseminating the lessons learnt in the Action.

Interviews held and upladed on the wiki (Result 1.1)

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 base of the continuation process. They have been uploaded on the wiki and the issues emerging from these interviews have been linked with the chapters of the Manuals. These interviews have 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.

Preparing knowledge resources

(Activity Line 2 and 3)

The resources being collected and created at EUGAD are meant to facilitate the opinion makers in Europe to understand the challenges of Global Partnerships for Development so that they can better inform their target audiences. Resource Mapping has started in order to support the collection of knowledge resources. ⇒ See Collecting and Creating Knowledge Resources

Preparation of the manuals (Result 2.1)

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.

Pre-production of an eight-episode documentary on the MDGs(Result 3)

Script writing and pre-production of the documentaries is also under way. Actual shooting will start in January 2010 in Syria. 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 ⇒ video documentaries.

Major Issues and Challenges

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 standard ambiguous position of EuropeAid that on the one hand wants to expand its activities beyond the old style development initiatives and involve new actors from civil society and from new member countries; on the other hand, the Europaid has 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. They find Europaid procedures and reporting systems complex and unwieldy. The partners often resist the efforts of the Applicant towards ensuring (i) that all outputs and processes and related documentation (documents, reports and outputs) maintain quality standards and (ii) that all procedural requirements and contractual agreements are respected. They often think that the applicant is fabricating its own standards and rules while all that the Applicant is doing is ensuring that the EC philosophy, logics, quality and standards are respected. The experts in the project team, who are experienced sector specific professionals, continue to translate their expertise into indications and support (incluluding mentoring) for those who are new to this experience. Since this internal capacity building is done “in corsa” (on the path), a lot of time gets dedicated to addressing this issue. And more 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. 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 is gradually 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 to facilitate horizontal communication, i.e. free and un-moderated exchange of views amongst partners and contributors. See more at Eugad on Facebook

While most of the Partners have adapted to the challenges above (after an initial period of adaptation), there are three organizations that were part of the consortium that presented the proposal and that are still searching for their identity in EUGAD , viz: ERCEQ in Bulgaria; LABOS and UCIIM in Italy.

As of now, the tasks of these three partners is being covered by the other country partners. The applicant sent partnership agreements to these three partners requesting them to sign it, thereby accepting their role and responsibility in the project. However, these partners have not yet returned these agreements back to the Applicant. Dialogue is still continuing with all of them.

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. While its professional role has been taken over for the time being by Armadilla, we have arrived to an agreement that UCIIM will remain a strategic stakeholder, still continue to support the project and will be a beneficiary of the activities aimed at empowering the educators.

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.
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. So far, 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. 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.

In the Monitoring report, 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 projct activities.

Results Oriented Monitoring - Centrally Managed Thematic Projects (ROM CMTP)

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;
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 analyzed 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

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Action progress report - December 2009

From Eugad wiki

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