Resource centre
South / North NGO dialogue
"Building our common identity" is the starting point for a dialogue process initiated between East African NGOs and their Northern partners. The civil society identity of Northern and Southern NGOs is eroded when they are more conscious of their own survival, through funding mechanisms and related use of power, rather than their stated causes and the necessary developmental practices that are more likely to sustain partnership for social development.
EASUN and PSO (a network of 50 NGOs in the Netherlands) are planning a dialogue event between Northern and Southern NGOs, to take place in November 2009. The dialogue will seek to surface and enact the values that Northern and Southern NGOs claim jointly as civil society organisations, examine appropriate relationships and approaches to sharing knowledge, expertise and material resources and explore essential skills that we need to develop toward becoming ethical leaders capable of building capacities for effective advocacy and developmental service delivery.
Preparatory meetings toward the November dialogue event have been held by both EASUN and PSO, respectively, for East African NGOs and Dutch NGO affiliated to PSO. In seeking to make partnership and capacity development of CSOs more meaningful, organisations participating in the East African preparatory workshop in March 2009 noted that capacity building needs to increase support for strategic qualities related to institution building, such as value based planning and management, organisational identity and purpose and the confidence to engage in and sustain dialogue in the partnership.
