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Description
School dropout rates in Romania remain among the highest in Europe and the educational system results show a high proportion of 15 years old students with low educational performances. Civil society organizations are constantly mobilizing for responding to the needs of the school aged children from disadvantaged environments and ensure their access to education. However, their organizational capacity is in many cases limited, with ad-hoc interventions, while the organizations do not succeed in investing in the sustainability and building their capacity. Both a survey carried out by World Bank in 2020 and an analysis performed by Teach for Romania Association revealed a set of urgent needs: fundraising, organizational management, operational planning for short term, strategic planning, measuring and monitoring the impact on beneficiaries, as well as partnerships and relations with local public institutions.
The aim of the project is to increase the capacity of NGOs to develop and carry out sustainable interventions that support the right to education of children from disadvantaged communities in Ilfov, Călărași, Brașov, Iași and Vaslui counties. The current project covers the needs of capacity building of the organizations through interventions on fundraising capabilities, organizational management, and management of relations with public authorities.
Another contribution that the project will bring to the sector is raising the level of public awareness on the problems and obstacles in education, alongside the profile of the organizations that work on solving them. The project seeks to address these needs in a way that is connected to the reality of organizations, generating autonomy and sustainability while encouraging collaboration and knowledge sharing between organizations.
Summary of project results
The project addressed the reduced capacity for sustainable implementation of strategic interventions reported in the NGO sector, manifested by the lack of stable funding sources, effective management procedures and institutional partnerships.
Training, mentoring, coaching services were offered and connection contexts with relevant actors were facilitated for 21 small and medium-sized NGOs from the counties of Iași, Vaslui, Brașov, Călărași, Ilfov, Prahova and Galați, from the social fields, provision of basic, medical and infrastructure needs. The project''s activities were constant in: analysis of the context and needs; offering mentoring in the realization of 10 partnership proposals, used later in discussions with potential corporate financiers by 10 NGOs; facilitating 6 meetings between NGOs and public institutions for 5 organizations that have obtained collaboration agreements; providing training and mentoring in attracting donations from individual donors.
Most important result: creation of a revenue strategy guide and 12 Whitepaper-type documents for the presentation of organizations; 11 partnerships resulted between the beneficiery NGOs and potential corporate financiers; implementing 8 campaigns to attract donations from the general public, using donation mechanisms introduced by the project; the realization of 4 organizational strategies and operational plans; offering consultancy in the realization of 7 communication plans; collaborative writing of 3 project applications on public funds. The participation of NGOs in 9 networking events with other organizations, companies and institutions was facilitated. Tools based on the resources created in the project were made available to the general public through the website, an effort complemented by an awareness campaign about problems in education. The impact of the project consisted in the training of the 21 through the efficiency of the fundraising, management and communication processes, as well as in the creation of a support network between NGOs.