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Moshi Dialogue. Issues to be explored Conference MS 3 June 09. The typical Danish-Tanzanian CSO-partnership. Outset: Friendship between a Danish and a Tanzanian organisation, could be professional organisations, specialised in e.g. hunting, water and sanitation
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Moshi Dialogue Issues to be explored Conference MS 3 June 09
The typical Danish-Tanzanian CSO-partnership • Outset: Friendship between a Danish and a Tanzanian organisation, could be professional organisations, specialised in e.g. hunting, water and sanitation • The partners work together on joint projects that are limited in time, supported by Danida • Through the joint work the friendship and partnership is built up, modified and changed. • What is really the heart of the partnership, apart from the funding mechanism?
Typical faith-based Danish-Tanzanian CSO-partnership • Outset: Friendship between a Danish and a Tanzanian organisation, based on joint values • Personnel and ideas are exchanged, presence is valued • Institutions are built to serve the poor, often with heavy North-input • To some extent the partners work together on joint projects that are limited in time, supported by Danida • Through the joint project work the friendship and partnership is built up, modified and changed. • What is really the heart of the partnership, apart from the funding mechanism?
Fowler-’pathologies’ ? – glimpses from EASUN process • ”Northern CSOs build up a branch in Tanzania, their ’Tanzania office’. They build up capacity of the Tanzanian partners, and afterwards employing the partners’ best staff, leaving the partner in a difficult situation…” • How to secure the Southern organisations’ integrity
Fowler-’pathologies’ ? – glimpses from EASUN process • Capacity development of Southern CSOs aims primarily to secure smooth management, not to build up strategic thinking skills • Strategizing might be experienced as a thing Northern NGO’s do to suit the back donor, not at something which is owned by both partners, not to talk about the beneficiaries…
Other observations from EASUN: • on Dutch (or could it be Danish?) NGOs emphasizing equality: ”They don’t want to be seen as imposing even when they are imposing…” • ””Do not bite the hand that feeds you” is an old African proverb – and this is very well managed from this side”
Mandate of Civil Society Organisations • Is it enough to have a good idea and be able to formulate and run a programme? • How can CSOs claim a mandate? • Who do they represent – measurement:Membership figures, geographical rooting, or?
The added value of civil society • Civil society – what are our particular characteristics, what can we particularly offer compared to state and market? • How to develop our characteristics and capacity so that we are not just a sub-department of the back donor? • Values, e.g. to serve and/or to democratize/politicize/mobilise?
Questions to partnerships • At what level is the commonality? • On which basis is my intervention appropriate? Procedural/values • Do I intervene on basis of what we share? Or on basis of my own values?