A joint project between NGOs in Finland, Estonia and Sweden
Seven Finnish, Swedish and Estonian NGOs have in March 2006 started a 3 year project funded by the European Commission to raise public awareness about EU's development policy as well as about North-South relations. The specific objective is to strengthen development NGOs' capacity to disseminate information of EU development policy and to participate in the planning of and the debate over EU development policy.
The project is called FEST, which means that Finland, Estonia and Sweden are working together for development.
Target group
Development NGOs and their key persons are the main target group of the project. The amount of potential NGOs in all three countries is around 160. In Finland, the participation of Deaf people to the project activities will be facilitated with Finnish Sign Language interpretation
Indirect target group is general public, which will be reached through many kinds of information dissemination activities, such as articles in the newspapers and magazines and in Estonia TV productions.
Activities in three countries
The project will organize activities in the three countries and in Brussels. The capacity of the target groups will be built by a mentoring process, trainings, national and international seminars and study trips. A network between development NGOs in Estonia, Finland and Sweden will be built. The general public, especially youth and young adults, will be reached through the work of development NGOs. The project will work together with media and folk universities for greater information dissemination.
Themes each year
Each year the project is focused on a certain theme. The first theme is EU's development policy in general. The second year will focus on EU's policy coherence (development, trade, security etc) and the theme of the third year will be participation of development NGOs and southern partners to the planning and implementation of EU´s development policy.
Project organisation
The project is lead by the Finnish Association of the Deaf (FAD). Estonian Fund for Nature (ELF), Concord Sweden, International Solidarity Foundation (Finland) and FinnChurchAid (Finland) participate as a consortium members, while the Finnish NGDO Platform to the EU (Kehys) and the European Movement Estonia act as partners.
For a more detailed presentation of the project, please, click the link below. The power point presentation will start automatically so sit back in your chair and find out more about the FEST project. The presentation will take about three minutes.