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Over the last three years, DSC has developed its work and increased its number of projects and their variety. These developments come along with the partner’s increasing demand that DSC play a greater role in supporting their institutions and helping them in establishing joint projects.
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A three-year project conducted by the support of NOVIB “Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation” in aim to develop institutional capacity building for the Civil Society institutions in Egypt.
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Through the project period 12 workshops were facilitated By DSC, also individual consultancy and step forward a platform of cooperation between the civil society institutions (meetings, conferences,…) were held. 41 participants from 18 organizations participated on those events.
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This project permitted to DSC to expand and develop its institutional capacity, also the abilities of its team work.
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Starting in August 2001 till September 2004, the Institutional Capacity Building of four Art Groups was initiated to address and support the phenomenon of the increasing emergence of independent artistic groups in Egypt.
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This phenomenon is something we strongly believe will have an impact on the development of Egyptian society in general. To strengthen this impact within the community, DSC provides institutional support and capacity-building to these Art Groups.
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The approach of the project has been to combine a peer learning approach between the four participant organizations, where DSC is the facilitator, with specific in house-training, legal and financial consultations, and documentation.
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Due to the project’s positive outcomes for all participants, the project was expanded in December 2002 for another year and another four organizations joined the initiative. The project was supported by CASE “Cultural Association Sweden-Egypt” in Sweden.
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Since the mid-nineties, community participation and empowerment have become important terms in the vocabulary of NGOs, particularly in the aftermath of the ICPD in Cairo (1994). Nevertheless many organizations are still far from either clearly understanding the implication of these concepts or lack the necessary competencies to undertake these roles.
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In supporting this trend, many international and national capacity building organizations assisted numerous NGOs to tackle the issues related to community development from a right based approach as well as to help their institutional development.
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On the whole such training courses addressed the concepts and were mainly directed to the first line leadership of the organizations. The community workers on whose shoulders the success of the projects often depended and who in actual fact are the ones responsible within the community to promote, implement and coordinate community action were often neglected.
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By the community facilitators we refer to the staff at community level organizations which is entrusted with program and projects coordination, supervision and leading others in the project and in the community. They are usually people from the communities which have had experience both in working in the community as well as in an organization. They have a leading role in both the community as well as the organization they belong to.
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The project’s goal is to develop the competencies of these community facilitators. This staff requires a variety of vital skills and attitudes, including planning and management skills, awareness raising and training skills, advocacy and lobbying skills as well as the conceptual framework for community development and the associated ideas related to empowerment and the right- based approach.
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The project was supported by IIE (Institute of International Education)
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Governance has become a vital and important worldwide issue for all organizations, in both profit and non-for profit sectors alike. The concept, which gained much interest, particularly in the aftermath of the Asian financial crises of the “Tiger” countries in 1997, has continued to grow in importance since then.
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Experience in the Arab region has generally shown that the development of the concept and practice of good Governance, in comparison to many other counties, is strongly lagging behind. When Governance was included in the human development index (The Arab Human Development Report, UNDP, 2002), the position of the Arab region radically receded.
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Governance was identified to be of outstanding relevance to the needs of the NGOs which DSC worked with as well as to the development of civil society as a whole. The need to promote good Governance, as an essential component for the development of civil society in the Arab society, emerged through a process of cooperation between DSC and the National Centre for Non-Profit Boards now Board Source in a project supported by Ford Foundation.
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The project period is 2004-2005. Around 30 participants from 6 Arab countries are participating: Egypt- Morocco- Yemen-Palestine – Iraq- Jordan.
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In its Action Plan on Child Protection, released in June 2001, CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) outlines and emphasizes the importance of promoting the rights of the children who are in need of special protection from exploitation, abuse and discrimination. At the Agency level, CIDA has set up a Children's Rights Unit located within the Policy Branch. The unit is committed to providing tools that enable programming branches to better integrate children's rights issues into programming, including the Agency's increased interest in supporting the development of private sector development in low and middle income countries, such as Egypt.
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The CP Strategy is intended to be a definitive document outlining: 1) CIDA's position on child protection; 2) key child protection issues in Egypt; 3) what is being done to address child protection issues; and, 4) what CIDA expects to accomplish in the area of child protection and how it will manage its efforts. As such, the CP Strategy is viewed as a further definition of the CDPF, specifically focused on child protection as a crosscutting theme. The CP Strategy is not intended as a starting point for discussion leading to project investments. Rather, it is intended as a definitive statement of the Egypt Program's overall position and objectives with respect child protection and will serve as a precise guide to planning, implementing and reviewing both project and non-project investments in support of child protection issues. Accordingly, the CP Strategy will not concern itself with identifying specific project opportunities (tactical), but rather will focus on strategic level (Program) results and the mechanisms for achieving them.
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| As part of the process of institutional
capacity building of NGO's, DSC has been able to monitor
the institutional progress and growing impact of different
NGO's in their diverse fields of influence. One of the main
weaknesses that still remains as a problem is the differential
capacity of organizations to document and make visible their
different experiences and share them with other civil society
organizations. DSC discussed its interest in developing
its own capacity and focus in this area, in order to benefit
NGO's to build this experience. Through discussions with
Oxfam Novib, it was agreed to make the development of the
experience of documentation one of the priority areas which
DSC would work on within its institutional capacity building
support during 2007.
In collaboration with six CSO's this project aims at improving
the skill of learning among participant NGO's through capturing
their experiences, building experiences internally to ensure
sustainability and enhancing exchange of knowledge and experience
among participant NGO's and sharing it with other initiatives. |
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