Today, Feb 10th, sees the long-awaited launch of the DSW’s excellent new resource mobilisation e-learning tool, www.eu-learning.org. Created as part of DSW’s Euroleverage project, the new tool has been designed to equip and train local civil society organisations (CSOs) in low- and middle-income countries in how to better access EU based funding opportunities. This, in connection with DSW’s Euroresources which profiles 32 European donors, including over 50 of their funding programmes, now completes the one-stop-shop needs of CSO’s in accessing EU funds.
This latest new initiative of ours has been developed to compliment the on-ground chain of capacity building initiatives on resource mobilisation that we have been conducting in Africa and Asia over seven years as part of Euroleverage. Within this framework of technical assistance, we’ve developed a training curriculum that covers many aspects of resource mobilization including e.g. the resource mobilization lifecycle, donor and partnerships, EC funding instruments and the logical framework approach.
Our trainings have taken an interactive approach, involving theoretical presentations and group exercises and discussions to allow participants to learn by doing, while also sharing their experiences from proposal writing and resource mobilization. In the last two years alone, we’ve been successful in supporting over 227 CSOs through our workshops, with many more to come.
And we do want to reach more – a lot more!
Why a resource mobilization e-learning platform?
Based on its experience in training CSOs in East Africa, West Africa and South Asia on resource mobilization, DSW wanted to make this learning more accessible to CSOs elsewhere in the world that cannot access our workshops.
All aspects of resource mobilization would not be possible to cover in a short online training, but we wanted to provide an introduction to aspects of resource mobilization and how to best respond to EU calls for proposals. Taking into account the suggestions raised by our CSO partners, and our experiences with the EU, this core set of six toolkits has been created to:
– Building resource mobilization capacity and guide predictable and structured processes
– Improving ability of participants to identify and respond to funding opportunities from European donors and access funding for Health and FP project
– Facilitate an essential understanding of the Logical Framework Approach as one method of project design and proposal development.
Our main expectation is that through this learning, you’ll manage to prepare and submit quality proposals towards European donors, whom collectively remain the world’s largest provider of development assistance funding (a full 60 per cent!).
Improving civil society’s collective ability to mobilize resources for health and family planning from the EU can help generate greater development gains.
Who could benefit?
The toolkits have been designed in an interactive manner, and we’ve tried to adapt exercises that can fit a diverse level of knowledge, such as:
– You are from time to time involved in resource mobilization and proposal writing in your organization, but you are not necessarily part of a resource mobilization team or have extensive experience of proposal writing
– You are the Director or Team Leader of a local CSO, and you’re looking for helpful materials and tools to guide your team in proposal development
– You are a student, volunteer, or consultant that wants to learn some essential knowledge and skills of resource mobilisation to support your future resource mobilization efforts
If this matches you, then we are confident that this new tool will help!
Don’t forget about all the other great resources for your fundraising efforts—take a look at Euroresources.org – an online database of European funding programmes! Containing profiles of 32 European donors and over 50 of their funding programmes, and an interactive world map, you can exercise your skills on some of the most relevant programmes for CSOs in your country.
