Description
The current economic crisis and the need for greater territorial cohesion call for a greater intersectoral coordination of public policies and for a greater involvement of NGOs in the work required for achieving sustainable local development. This requires broad knowledge of new learning processes, oriented towards community revitalization and social innovation. The project’s objective is to create the Academy for Cohesion in Azores, an entity which is to provide NGOs and local actors in the Azores Islands with skills in community revitalization and social innovation, as well as to train cohesion agents through the learning of a set of specific skills. The project will engage with various entities in the region for the implementation of alternative models of multilevel governance and of dynamic and participatory budgeting processes.
Summary of project results
The principle of territorial cohesion requires greater cross-sectoral coordination of policies and greater involvement of NGOs in new processes ensuring sustainable local development. This implies new learning processes geared towards territorial animation and social innovation, which should be able to create innovative, autonomous and sustainable communities. It is therefore important to involve in these processes NGOs and local authorities in order to reverse processes of territorial disintegration (training of staff for action facilitating changes in local contexts conducive to competitiveness, employment and social inclusion). The main purpose of the project was to create a new institution – the Agency for Territorial Cohesion in the Azores Islands - whose purpose is to build capacities in the region’s NGOs. By the end of the project not only the Agency was formally set up but also 3 thematic training actions and 3 thematic ateliers on territorial governance, on territorial monitoring and on collaborative local development projects have been organised and a manual to train cohesion agents in the region was produced. In total 26 staff, leaders and volunteers from 9 NGOs were trained, slightly above the initial target. The Agency is making its first steps and therefore it has been a very rich learning process to prepare for meeting its ambitions: to develop competences of the NGO, to call their attention to the territorial components of their actions (governance, monitoring) in order to make the difference and induce the change in the Azores in a sustainable way.
Summary of bilateral results