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Description
Following a series of studies conducted by the Young Initiative Association and World Vision Romania on 111 Romanian NGOs (out of which 37 from the rural areas) it emerged both a consistent lack of sustainability of the Romanian nonprofit sector, strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a strong need of education and direct support for the members of Romanian nonprofits.
The project will provide a complex programme for supporting the organizations, with fully complementary activities, structured on 3 main pillars:
1. NGO Accelerator Programme - programme through which 10 NGOs from rural areas and 10 NGOs active in the fields of youth, civic education, environment and human rights will benefit, for 17 months, of a package of coaching and mentoring activities, learning activities and developing a learning network between the beneficiary NGOs, targeting longer-term changes in their organizations.
2. Package of 3 online courses with free access (MOOC) - we will build 3 packages of educational experiences on the following topics: Organisational Resilience, Good Governance, Nonprofit Communication. These courses will be open, free and self-paced and will form an essential part of the learning component of the Accelerator programme.
3. Self-Accelerator Tool - In order to increase the sustainability and the relevance of the project the Young Initiative Associationwill build a tool that will encompass key coaching and mentoring tools used in the first pillar of the project, adapting them for NGOs which want to go through the organisational development process in an unfacilitated/self-paced manner.
The project will be implemented in partnership with World Vision Romania.
Summary of project results
Civil society in Romania is facing significant sustainability challenges for NGOs, further amplified by the pandemic period as well as a strong need of education and direct support for the leaders and teams of Romanian nonprofits, a fact confirmed by the study conducted in preparation for the NGO Sustainability Accelerator.
The project ran from September 2021 to January 2024, supporting both a specific group of 25 NGOs from across the country with intensive organizational development interventions and national-level NGOs through free educational tools. The NGO acceleration program was successfully completed, with 25 NGOs supported to enhance their organizational capacity. 3 complementary activities were implemented structured on 3 main pillars: 1. NGO Accelerator Programme through which 25NGOs active in the fields of youth, civic education, environment and human rights benefitted from a wide-ranging direct intervention following principles of cocreation and empowerment. It consisted in a package of coaching and mentoring activies, learning activites, developing a learning network between the beneficiary NGOs, targeting a long-term approach. 2. Package of 3 MOOC courses on the following topics: Organisational Resilience, Good Governance, Nonprofit Communication. These courses are open, free and self-paced and form an essential part of the learning component of the Accelerator programme. 3. Creation of Self-Accelerator Tool to increase the sustainability and the relevance of the project by encompassing key coaching and mentoring tools used in the first pillar of the project, adapting them for NGOs which want to go through the organisational development process in an unfacilitated/self-paced manner.
24 NGOs from all over Romania conducted a diagnostic analysis, and 16 created an organizational development plan. Additionally, 18 field visits by coaches and 9 consultancy visits by the management team were organized. Two physical networking meetings (in Bucharest) were held in June 2022 and March 2023. Moreover, the beneficiary NGOs formed an online learning community. Within the project, three MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were prepared (Good Governance, Nonprofit Communication, Organizational Resilience), as well as the Self-Accelerator tool, all of which were publicly launched in October 2023. The courses registered 360 participants, and the Self-Accelerator tool had 2,451 accesses. Furthermore, the NGO Sustainability Forum was organized on October 25, 2023, bringing together 115 participants from the NGO sector to promote organizational development themes and project results. The project was awarded Third Prize in the Economic and Social Development category at the 2024 Civil Society Gala, recognizing its sustainable impact at the national level.