Category: In-Country Forums

Partnership & Engagement 2022 – 2025
Strategic Impact Article

At a Glance
- 213 joint events held
- 1,711 participants, including 688 first-time attendees
- 250+ local organisations engaged since 2022
- 47 in-person events in 10+ countries, including Nairobi, Kampala and Stockholm
- 78% of all events are delivered online for global accessibility
- 16% of all 2025 participants came from local actors
- 40% of sessions co-led by members or local partners
- 5 members piloted the Reframing Partnerships initiative
Strengthening Member Collaboration

At the heart of EU-CORD’s work is the partnership between our member organisations both in Europe and the countries where they work.

Member offices and their in-country teams took active roles in co-facilitating events, hosting learning sessions, and piloting new tools. This internal collaboration significantly strengthened the coherence, capacity, and connectedness of our network.

Between 2022 and 2025, EU-CORD hosted 213 joint activities — not as stand-alone events, but as part of a deliberate strategy to connect member organisations, their in-country teams, and their local partners across the world.

In total, over 1,700 people took part in EU-CORD activities during this period, including 688 first-time participants. More than 90% engaged in multiple sessions, and by 2024, 56.6% of members had participated in over 10 initiatives — showing strong and sustained commitment.

We worked hard to make participation accessible. Around 78% of all activities were held online, enabling engagement across time zones, roles, and resource levels. At the same time, we recognised the unique value of face-to-face gatherings: 47 in-person events were hosted in more than 10 countries, including Nairobi, Kampala, Stockholm, Budapest, and Brussels.

Crucially, participation helped connect not just organisations, but the people within them. CEOs engaged in vision-setting and co-creation; technical staff shared tools and insights; local partners contributed as facilitators and knowledge holders. Over 40% of all sessions were co-led by members or external partners, reinforcing EU-CORD’s commitment to decentralised expertise and mutual learning.

Stronger Local Relationships

Over the course of the strategy period, EU-CORD connected with more than 250 local organisations, some of whom became recurring contributors. These relationships were not incidental — they were the result of deliberate effort to shift roles, share space, and build mutual trust. In 2025 alone, 16% of all participations in network activities came from local partners — a record high.

Events such as the Locally Led Advocacy Series and the Partnership Learning Sessions were shaped by local realities and perspectives.

Member Offices Working Across Borders

Our vision for partnership also included stronger collaboration between member offices and their in-country teams. Events were increasingly co-hosted by member teams based in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In-country forums, regional learning events, and joint advocacy workshops were co-developed with staff on the ground.

The In-Country Forum Toolkit, developed in 2024, helped members create national-level spaces for shared strategy, learning, and engagement with donors. Pilots in Kenya, Nepal, and DR Congo demonstrated the value of decentralised collaboration.

Shared Practice and Mutual Support

The Reframing Partnerships initiative was a standout achievement, developed collaboratively with members and local actors. The project included:
- A shared methodology for more equitable partnership practices
- A piloting process with five member organisations
- A survey and feedback cycle
- A proposed self-assessment and reflection tool for future use
These efforts helped members critically assess and strengthen their partnership models. The results will feed directly into our Strategy 2026+ tools.

Reflecting Forward

CEO insights have affirmed that partnership is not just a principle but a strategic asset — especially when it meaningfully involves member offices, in-country teams, and in-country partners. Moving into the 2026+ strategy, we will build on this foundation by deepening local leadership, expanding peer exchange among members, and ensuring that engagement creates clear value for organisations across different contexts. New formats like Learning Circles and Action Groups will support this shift — offering more space for members and partners to shape agendas, lead practice, and connect strategy to lived realities.
Ruth Faber

9 September 2025

Annual Report, Funding & Partnerships, In-Country Forums
Meaningful Engagement: A New Tool for CSOs
Over the years, EU-CORD members have repeatedly raised a key question in our regional workshops:

How can civil society organisations (CSOs) engage more effectively with EU Delegations?

This conversation has returned again and again, underlining both the importance and the challenge of building constructive dialogue with EU institutions.

In response, EU-CORD committed to engage on members’ behalf in this area, working alongside partners to gather insights and share experiences. This work is carried out with the CONCORD working group on civil society meaningful engagement.

From Consultation to Action

Often, after consultations, we would reflect on outcomes and share feedback—sometimes through ad hoc surveys after each meeting. This new initiative consolidates that work into one coordinated space. The Meaningful Engagement Platform builds directly on the principles set out in CONCORD’s paper

Building Partnerships Through Meaningful Consultation: 7 Practices for Civil Society Participation in EU Decision-Making

”—ensuring consultations are:
1. Timely and inclusive
2. Accessible and well-communicated
3. Transparent in purpose and process
4. Participatory and co-owned
5. Responsive to input
6. Sustained beyond single events
7. Evaluated and improved over time
Instead of scattered follow-up exercises, we now have a structured, multilingual feedback tool (available in English, French, and Spanish) to collect and analyse CSOs’ experiences of EU engagement across multiple consultations. The platform not only tracks and compiles evidence in one place, but also shares resources, examples of good practice, and guidance to support effective, respectful, and strategic engagement with EU Delegations.

Why This Matters

Meaningful engagement is not a one-sided process. It benefits both CSOs and the EU, helping to shape policies that reflect diverse perspectives and respond to real needs.

For EU-CORD, this is about more than advocacy—it is about relationship. As much as civil society has a responsibility to raise concerns and speak truth to power, we also recognise the importance of acknowledging good practice when we see it. Where colleagues in the EU institutions and Brussels show openness, listen well, and engage constructively, we should be quick to highlight and encourage that.

In our work, dignity is for all. By humanising the way we engage—on both sides—we create space for trust, collaboration, and change that lasts. As people of faith, we are called to “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly” (Micah 6:8). This means speaking truth where it is needed, but also being quick to recognise and honour what is good (Philippians 4:8). In doing so, we reflect a dignity that belongs to all.

A Call to Our Members

We encourage all EU-CORD members to:
- Explore and use the tool to access resources and practical guidance on engaging with EU Delegations.
- Share your experiences—both challenges and successes—so that together we can build a stronger, evidence-based picture of civil society engagement with the EU.
Your insights are essential. The more we learn from each other, the better we can influence and improve how the EU works with civil society.

Platform Launch – 29 September 2025

The Meaningful Engagement Platform and its feedback tool will be launched on 29 September 2025. After the launch, this article will be updated with a direct link to the platform. In the meantime, you can find full details of the launch event and registration here: More information on the launch and registration.
Ruth Faber

11 August 2025

Advocacy Hub, Funding & Partnerships, In-Country Forums
Towards the future of fundraising

I must say that the conference over the three days was a very enriching and good experience, and several things will stick with me when I return to my own tasks within Help a Child
Tiny Biewenga

In early June, Nairobi we launched our brand-new ‘Developing your Business Case’ workshop.’

Held in Nairobi, the event brought together around 40 participants from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Malawi, and Ethiopia. These individuals, representing various In-Country Forums, gathered with a shared goal: to enhance their collaborative efforts and strengthen their capacity to develop compelling business cases and value propositions.

The workshop’s agenda was designed to foster deep engagement among the participants, primarily through group work within their respective In-Country Forums. These forums, which serve as critical platforms for collaboration among EU-CORD members and their local partners, were the focal point of the workshop. Through intensive discussions and interactive exercises, participants worked on refining their value propositions and crafting robust, multi-stakeholder business cases essential for securing funding and driving impactful projects.

Ruth Faber from the EU-CORD Secretariat and Tiny Biewenga, the Coordinator for Institutional Relations at Help a Child, facilitated the workshop. Ruth and Tiny brought a wealth of experience and a practical approach to the sessions, ensuring that the participants left with actionable insights and tools that could be immediately applied in their work. Their guidance was instrumental in helping participants transition from conceptualizing project outline pitches to donors to developing comprehensive proposals.

One significant outcome of the workshop was the strengthening of the In-Country Forums. Participants left with improved business cases and a renewed sense of partnership and collaboration. The forum groups became incubators for new ideas and initiatives, fostering a spirit of innovation that will undoubtedly benefit the broader EU-CORD network.

Building on the workshop’s success, a business model toolkit based on the sessions will be released in the autumn. The toolkit will provide EU-CORD members with a comprehensive guide to developing compelling business cases. The business model will serve as a valuable resource for members across the network, enabling them to apply the principles and practices discussed during the workshop in their contexts.

Co-facilitator Tiny Biewengahad has this to say about the workshop:

This was a truly international gathering. It was my first time facilitating this kind of meeting, and I felt excited but also a bit afraid. Being an institutional fundraiser for the past five years has brought me much insight into how I think NGOs can prepare for the future, but I would by no means dare to put myself forward as a true expert on anything.

So, Ruth and I decided we would go on a journey as much as the participants with us.
This meant that listening, triggering discussion, and having the participants share would be just as important as sharing what we had prepared.

Three big takeaways

1. Proactive institutional fundraising based on value propositions is a game changer for many NGOs.

Reflecting on what was so, it seems the main message of the three days was to stay true to yourself.

Think deeply about what defines your organisation and translate that into a statement of how you add value to a donor or ‘customer’. A value proposition helps you identify which projects fit your organisation’s goals and how you are uniquely interesting to a donor and also helps in forming consortia, as other organizations know it is what you bring. There is not necessarily one value proposition per organisation, but limiting yourself to 1 or 2 helps focus and growth. Many participants mentioned that this was their main takeaway from the conference.

2. It is very helpful to start investing in gaining a strong donor perspective ourselves.

One of the participants mentioned: “The thing that stuck with me was that I suddenly was a donor who had to select the best value proposition. You start looking at things very differently”. Investing in proposal writing is only one side of the coin of good fundraising. Knowing who your donor is and putting yourself in her shoes is even more important. Drafting out the ‘pains’ and ‘gains ‘jobs’ that your NGO, your intervention or your project will do for your donor is another way of getting clarity on whether you are a match to a donor and what to propose.

3. Fora and consortia only work when you are very clear about what you need and what you have to offer.

Something that really came out of the discussion was that members of the in-country fora can be sharper in what they want out of the fora. As one participant recalled, There is no shame in stopping something that is not fruitful because it was based on a nice idea only. The in-country fora are brought together from the notion that the sum is more than its parts. But synergy often does not just ‘happen’.

For synergy to be achieved, clarity is crucial. This includes clarity on fundraising goals, the types of propositions and business cases that each member brings, and where they see gaps and challenges. The three-day workshop really allowed the fora to sort out who we are and what we bring to and get from the fora. This alone will already make them stronger in fundraising.

All in all, the conference was a success, not due to Ruth or me, but because of all the wind of change and excitement brought by the participants. It was their vision, focus, value proposition, participation and mutual exchange of ideas and experiences that really made it worthwhile. This underscores the value of meeting across NGOs, nationalities and continents. If we share our ambitions and dreams and can serve each other in achieving those, then we can build a network for fundraising in the future.

Ruth Faber

6 September 2024

Funding & Partnerships, In-Country Forums, Learning Space
Making Connections: EU-CORD Workshop in Nairobi

I thought I knew a lot, but now we connect the dots…

After a break of four years, EU-CORD’s Funding and Partnership Workshop was re-vamped and given its first outing when, over 3-days, thirty participants got together to explore and deep-dive various aspects of institutional fundraising and EU development financing. The course was based on the DG INTPA Resource Map, which was developed for EU-CORD members in 2023.

Facilitator Ruth Faber said,

‘ The knowledge of people in the room was very high. They are already successful fundraisers and understand the fundamentals of grant writing well. What was lacking, and what we could spend time on, was exploring the linkages between donor thinking and policy and how this is articulated in the final articulation of call guidelines.

With participants from Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Uganda, there was a genuine appreciation for the chance to meet and learn from ‘local’ EU-CORD members. Moving beyond just email contacts, participants made personal connections, which, as we have learned over the years, is the basis for building organisational partnerships.

With the course materials and programme already prepared, we’re excited about possibly organising one or two more workshops in 2025!

Ruth Faber

18 December 2023

Annual Report, Funding & Partnerships, In-Country Forums
In-Country Forums are Growing!

It was following a EU-CORD ‘Funding and Partnerships Workshop’ in October 2019 hosted by Leprosy Mission in London that Paula Konttinen (FIDA) and Robert Osborne (Sign of Hope), who had both attended the workshop, started the East Africa EU-CORD forum jointly. Paula contacted all the initial participants, hosted and coordinated the meetings for the first two years thus taking the initiative by bringing workshop delegates together in Nairobi to build on their friendships and shared interests in East Africa development and so started to build the first ‘In-Country EU-CORD Forum’. At the beginning, informal monthly coffee gatherings were arranged. Participants shared their interests in learning, research, collaboration ideas and grant applications. An active WhatsApp group emerged and HQ support was granted which encouraged everyone to continue. In time a ‘collaboration statement’ was drafted which outlined their thematic interests, their common relationship in the EU-CORD network and consortia ideas. This was used to introduce forum members to the EU-delegation starting a donor relationship which has led to four concept note submissions with success with one leading to a full proposal submission in 2022. Two others are awaiting decisions.

In 2021 the suitability of the Kenya ‘model’ was to be tested by rolling the model out further when Ruth Faber introduced a new strategy to explore the possibility of establishing forums in new countries. Quickly forums came into being in Uganda and Ethiopia helped by Anders Jacobsen (LM International) and in Myanmar where an EU concept note was submitted. Since then, forums have started in Bangladesh, South Sudan and south-east Asia. Requests have been received by the Secretariat to explore the possibility of starting new forums in Nepal, The Philippines, DRC and Ukraine later in 2023.

Local leadership with direction developed by participants has led to each forum following its own unique direction. Learning from each other, finding opportunities for collaboration and building friendships while finding opportunities to seek donor funding has drawn willing participants together. The need for technical capacity building in understanding how DG INTPA works and how the application process functions as well as understanding who other potential donors are has created opportunity for the EU-CORD Secretariat and others to provide support drawing on Secretariat donor experience.

The shared features of all our forums is for there to be a convener, a leader who brings people together for meetings and hosts. This is often rotated on an annual or quarterly basis.

Having EU-CORD as the core is proving to be useful in many ways. The combined scale of EU-CORD member work impresses donors and opens doors (26 Europe based members working in more than 87 countries on humanitarian and development projects covering virtually all thematic areas) when included in an introductory statement to a ‘business case’. Local advocacy, when linked to EU-CORD’s work with Tabeth Masengu (EU-CORD Advocacy Officer) brings scale and added advocacy specialist support. Adrian Hawthorn is now providing support to forum leaders through discussing annual plans, sharing ideas and by providing training sessions on specific topics of interest when forums meet e.g. building consortia and meeting the donor etc. Adrian is also organising leaders’ meetings and an annual virtual conference for forum participants. Here ideas and challenges are shared, and fresh inspiration provided.

Being known by donors is so important. Many calls in 2023 by DG INTPA country delegations are ‘direct’ meaning that the donor invites INGO’s to make an application. Only those known to the delegation will be considered for such an invitation. A good place to start is with donor mapping to find out which donors are providing funding in your country. PerspActive continues to provide a weekly list of ‘open calls’, very useful through saving time screening donor websites. Sopeat Kiers-Mer (Teafund NL) has started a group looking at how Brussels connections can support member interests.

Perhaps the reasons the EU-CORD in-country forums are proving to be so popular is that we are stronger when we work together, combining our knowledge, skills, resources and thinking. When we collaborate on donor applications we are able to pool our creativity and design projects at greater scale. Donors are offering larger grants to applicants and that means that often these can only be accessed by those working at scale and in collaboration.

Later this year EU-CORD will be running a physical workshop in Nairobi 20-22 November ‘DG INTPA Grants and Partnerships Workshop’ (please register here). On 15^th November, a virtual all-day meeting for ‘In-Country Forum Members’ will be held. You can register here for this meeting.

The Ethiopia Forum sent me this photo taken at their last meeting. Please send Adrian (Adrian.hawthorn27@gamil.com) a picture of your next forum meeting so we can include them in the next newsletter, ‘Focus on Forums’. Finally, if you are interested in participating in the new forums planned for DRC, Ukraine, The Philippines or Nepal this autumn please let Adrian know.

Ruth Faber

7 August 2023

Annual Report, CEO & Senior Leaders, Funding & Partnerships, In-Country Forums
Supporting the In-Country Forums in 2023

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1677497086884{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”]EU-CORD is developing the In-Country Forums as locally led expressions of the network to facilitate collaboration, learning, and development among members and their partners in different countries.

Members also emphasise that it is up to the In-Country Forums to define their success and development steps. EU-CORD’s Secretariat wants to find a way to support these groups without taking on a strong leadership or coordinating role, to ensure that local leadership is central to the forums’ functioning.

To that end, Adrian Hawthorn has agreed to support the In-Country Forums by providing bilateral meetings with the convenors to share experiences and challenges. He will bring all the leaders together twice a year to build relationships and share learning.

In November, EU-CORD will host its Annual Global In-Country Forum Meeting, inviting everyone engaged in a forum to attend.

We’ve also integrated into our 2023 workplan most of the capacity-building and information requests raised by In-Country Forum members during our review session last year. This includes an update of our DG INTPA/NEAR grant application workshop, which will run in Nairobi in September and is open to all EU-CORD members and their partners working in the region.

Finally, members of the In-Country Forums will receive a newsletter 3x a year that will keep them updated on specific events and news that might interest them.

We hope that the In-Country Forums can build strong networks built on EU-CORD’s values of relationship, servanthood and compassion and that through them, we build stronger, more equitable partnerships and locally-rooted responses.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Ruth Faber

27 February 2023

In-Country Forums
Samosa and Chai
It’s been one year since members proposed to work more closely at the project-country level, extending the benefits experienced as members of EU-CORD beyond the confines of Europe.

At the ‘Funding and Partnerships’ Forum in November 2022, a review of the in-country forums took place where each forum had the opportunity to share what had happened, what worked for them and advice they would give others.

Here are six learnings (of the many identified) that we are sharing in this article:
1. Don’t underestimate the importance of getting to know each other and building trust through informal gatherings – some of the most successful groups bonded around samosa and chai.
2. Invest time in understanding each organisation’s activities and programme direction. Some have used workshop meetings to explore common strengths, opportunities and areas of convergent specialisms and mutual interest. These have included shared thematic areas, mutual interest in certain donors and advocacy.
3. Having someone to champion the start-up of each forum has been significant and having a coordinator to act as a contact point helps to keep the group moving forward.
4. Support from the Head Office is a key contributor to success in encouraging people to participate in the meetings and supporting follow-up actions.
5. All the groups have different needs. Identify what adds value in your context and work with people who buy into the shared vision. What success looks like for one forum might be very different for another.
While each of the Forums is on its own journey, everyone agreed that the strength of all is so much greater than the impact of any single agency working alone. We pray and hope that all be further encouraged, make new friends, and find inspiration and ideas to help shape initiatives in the future. Hopefully, new forum groups will come together where members work in the same country.

In 2023, support for the In-Country forums will remain a key objective for the network. Many of our activities, including review of funding trends and EU grant capacity building workshops, will be tailored to support these In-Country initiatives.

If you are an EU-CORD member and want to know more about this initiative, please contact the EU-CORD Secretariat. If you are not a member – but think you may be interested – look at our criteria for membership: https://www.eu-cord.org/about-us/join-us/
Ruth Faber

12 December 2022

In-Country Forums
Beyond Europe: EU-CORD Partnerships Evolve

At the Spring General Assembly, EU-CORD’s CEOs met in Brussels, Belgium, to reaffirm the network’s collaborative vision.

The CEOs reiterated that in order to deepen collaboration approaches, partnerships (a word repeatedly found in our 2022+ strategy) needed to move beyond relationship building in Europe to deepening partnerships between EU-CORD members and their national implementing partners at the country level.

To this end, the 26 CEOs have agreed to sign a Letter of Intent, designed to be shared within member organisations, to help turn the intention into action.

The substantive parts of the letter affirm:

In order to make this [partnership] a reality, we recognise that relationships need to be developed at all levels of our organisations and in all locations. These relationships need to be based on trust and confidence and on the shared values that we as Christian faith-based organisations hold and as are outlined in this letter.

The approach we are committing to means pro-actively seeking out EU-CORD member organisations wherever we are and pro-actively looking at ways that we work together in a range of areas.

Our aspiration is that within our organisations, there is a culture where the EU-CORD network is prioritised and invested into such that there is clear mutual benefit for all in the network. At times that can mean contributing our knowledge, skills and experience whilst at other times that could be benefitting from other organisations’ strengths.

We recognise that there is a risk that collaboration is restricted mostly at a European level and that this does not enable the full benefit of the network. In light of that, we will actively promote country-level engagement with EU-CORD members within our own organisations and explore ways to formalise this approach.
EU-CORD Letter of Intent

Since the General Assembly, we have developed a framework for in-country collaboration and support in-country EU-CORD forums in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Eastern Africa and Ethiopia.

Ruth Faber

16 May 2022

CEO & Senior Leaders, In-Country Forums

Strengthening Member Collaboration

Stronger Local Relationships

Member Offices Working Across Borders

Shared Practice and Mutual Support

Reflecting Forward

From Consultation to Action

Why This Matters

A Call to Our Members

Platform Launch – 29 September 2025

Three big takeaways