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Description
The NGO youth sector in Romania has a reduced development. The youth foundations have been overtaken by the current context in terms of working with young people and youth organizations leaving the developmental activities at the end of their priorities. The challenges of the sector are: instability of the national context on FJTs, outdated internal regulations, lack of transparency, outdated training of foundation staff, insufficient human resource and single source of funding.
The project aims to develop 20 youth foundations through a complex approach: evaluation of the foundations that are going to be supported; training (strategic planning, management procedures, systems for ensuring transparency of activities, diversifying financial resources, training of trainers); mentoring; multiplication support in establishing regional centers for the non-governmental youth sector; exchange of experience/networking and connecting with other stakeholders and material development and national support services for youth NGOs.
Overall, the project follows to increase the capacity and sustainability of the county youth foundations that would determine the consolidation of civil society at local/regional level trough the above-mentioned steps. The foundations developed through the project will have their services and activities for supporting the youth sector tailored on the needs of their direct beneficiaries. Federal youth NGOs will develop, adopt and implement effective internal management and transparency of organizational governance.
The project is implemented in partnership with National Youth Foundation, the only national youth facility that owns an infrastructure rich for young people which exceeds the capacity of public authorities to provide for young people; PONT Group that has extensive experience in developing programmes and processes at local level in the youth field. The envisaged activities coordinated by Newschool AS Norway respond to the needs of the project.
Summary of project results
When planned, the project aimed to strengthen the capacity of the network established by the National Youth Foundation (FNT) – a national structure that, unfortunately, prior to the project’s initiation, existed mostly on paper (as evidenced by the annual budget of under 5,000 euros in 2021).
Through the project, we targeted strengthening the capacity of member foundations and, consequently, the capacity of the National Youth Foundation. The intervention addressed various levels – the human resource capacity within members, attracting financial resources, transparency, internal management operations, etc. The following were organized: - 7 training sessions (funded within the project), in addition to many others funded from other sources. - 3 collaboration events within the network - 3 networking events - Numerous organizational-level analysis reports - Multiple mentoring sessions The project was extremely beneficial for FNT, particularly at the beginning of the Ukrainian refugee crisis, as it served as external validation, which gave international donors the confidence to collaborate with FNT. At the same time, it acted as a moment of reflection which, although led to a decrease in the number of members, subsequently triggered a true revival for the National Youth Foundation.
The results are as follows: - FNT is now recognized as a reference organization in the youth sector. - An over 130-fold increase in FNT’s annual budget, from 24,809 lei to 3,322,244 lei. - At the network level, the total budget increased from 8,485,639 lei to 20,976,910 lei. - The total number of employees with work contracts in the network grew from 47 to 92. - FNT is now a member of 2 European networks and 1 international network. The "Revitalizing the Youth Sector" project represented a true reinvention of FNT, which is now present in the public sphere and, together with its members, has immense growth potential
Summary of bilateral results
The cooperation with the partner in the donor states had a significant impact, especially in the educational component and in the interactions with the beneficiaries. The Norwegian partner, NewSchool, brought added value through its expertise and experience, eloquently demonstrated in the organization of the first meeting of the network, where we relied on their knowledge gained in collaboration with school inspectors in Romania. However, cooperation with the partner in the donor state has been challenging due to the internal restructuring process it is going through, including the possibility of closure of the activity.