The European Civic Forum is constantly working to improve its support to local organisations and movements, especially within its membership.
Through its operating grant from the CERV programme, the European Civic Forum has established a re-granting mechanism for member organisations, to be launched in 2023. The re-granting is an instrument of micro-financial support to civic groups, local initiatives, and movements in the European Union. The aim is to provide a flexible response and to strengthen capacity of member organisations in responding to societal and political challenges, but also build and sustain constituencies and engage in European network building and policies. This year separate calls were launched: one for Operational Support and the other one for Rapid Support. We are happy to introduce the results of this first call.
Operational support
Beneficiary: Polish Women’s Strike
Amount: 10 000 EUR
Description: Since the beginning of the full scale Russian war in Ukraine, PWS network is one of the biggest national reponders, providing assistance to newcomers from Ukraine in own humanitarian aid points in 30 cities in Poland and supporting hundreds of other help points. Additionally, ECF support will help us establish a sustainable international communication, build the campaigning capacity for our organization. The support will also help design a website in English and the boost to start building that system and to launch proper international campaign gathering support for women’s rights in Poland.
Beneficiary: Greek Forum of Refugees
Amount: 10 000 EUR
Description: The year 2023 is a crucial time for us due to the local and national elections in Greece, as well as the upcoming European Election in 2024. At the Greek Forum of Refugees, we are already preparing to organize and participate in various campaigns and activities with other Civil Society Organizations to promote effective inclusion and access to the decision-making process for refugee and migrant communities as part of Civil Society Organizations, on national and EU levels. With this support, we plan to organize workshops and training for our team, especially, our new Board members, to visit the European Parliament and different MEPs, and to meet with various organizations and platforms in Brussels, such as ECF, PICUM, ECRE, and others.
Beneficiary: SPIRALIS
Amount: 9 600 EUR
Description: The re-granting will enable us to launch the capacity building of the “CSO´s Development Platform”. We will empower the human rights defenders (members of our Platform) to be able to provide a flexible response to current local challenges in the context of the EU Rule of law and at a time of the ongoing war in Ukraine. The capacity building program will include the training sessions and mentoring – Human Rights Academy 2023, networking, media campaign with the aim to support and empower human rights defenders in their daily work with the most vulnarable groups in the different regions of the Czech Republic.
Rapid support
Beneficiary: European Movement-Italy
Amount: 6 000 EUR
Description: We concretely expect the following results:
1- The improvement of our human resources presence in the following months, which will give us the possibility to increase the work on project calls reaching more funding opportunities for the early future.
2 – Increase the presence of experts and external collaborators in our initiatives, with a specific interest in the concrete development of our “white book” of proposals for the EU elections 2024.
3 – Improve our capability of dissemination through social media campaigns and social media management work, to develop our sensitivity campaign on EU elections, our youth section initiatives and our educational activities with schools.
Beneficiary: Greek Forum of Refugees
Amount: 7 600 EUR
Description: Although the Greek Forum of Refugees is primarily a self-organized and self-advocacy organization, it has been actively present on the ground during different consecutive and continuous crises in Greece, such as the “refugee crisis” of 2015-2016, the pandemic crisis, and the Ukrainian crisis which led to the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers from Ukraine. Our priority is to support the vulnerable and marginalized people, particularly women with children, families, individuals with multiple life-threatening diseases, and those with special needs. Unfortunately, three months ago, there was a sudden interruption in funding for the vital role of communication officer in our organization, and we lost the position, which is critical to advancing our mission. The funding will partly cover this key position, in this crucial and challenging period of time.