Developing Civil Society

This is a vital measure - at present millions of dollars of aid money have been poured into Darfur. The national NGO scene has seen almost none of this. The Darfur Net - a network of 0 odd NGOs scattered through the three states of Darfur cannot even afford to buy a single computer.

This is changing somewhat as agencies are realising that they will be pulling out in the next few years - both declining funding and security make this a certainty - as a result they are looking around for national partners they can hand over their programmes too.

World Bank launches initiative to promote Sudan’s civil society action
Monday 5 February 2007 03:30.

Feb 4, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — The World Bank has launched an initiative to promote Sudanese civil society projects for peace and development, a press release said.

World Bank
The World Bank Sudan Country office launched "Sudan Development Marketplace (DM) for 2007" initiative to identify innovative development ideas for delivering results, engage directly with stakeholders working at community level, create a forum of knowledge sharing and dissemination and build partnerships with and between other development actors.
The DM for 2007 aligns with the needs and development perspectives of post-conflict Sudan. The statement said that the theme of Sudan DM for 2007 "Towards an Inclusive Sudanese Society" has been carefully selected to satisfy the aspirations of Sudanese people for peace and development.

The initiative aims to support the recovery and reconstruction efforts in the country through pro-poor and pro-peace initiatives working towards consolidating peace and supporting the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed on January 2005.
The overall competition would be looking for innovations in areas of encouraging community initiatives and collecting actions, reinforcing community identity and culture of tolerance, conflict resolution and peace. In addition to promoting change to address challenges and improve quality of life at the local level.

The projects must focus specifically on the theme, openness of the competition to civil society groups such as non-government organizations (NGOs), foundations, private entities, community based organizations, academic institutions, civic organizations and cooperatives, projects should be implemented within a timeframe of 12 months and budget proposals should not exceed US$ 20,000.

The World Bank also set evaluation criteria for the projects. These criteria include innovativeness, impact, replicability, cost effectiveness and partnerships.