[Spotykach] funding and ESF clash?

[Katrin]

Dear all,

this is the first time I mail to this list so I'll briefly introduce
myself: I'm Katrin, I work for EYFA in the office as a financial
coordinator, I used to be more actively invovled in the noborder network
and anti-racist initiatives in Germany and the UK and still work for the
UK based civil liberties organisation Statewatch. As EYFA office member,
I  took part in the Tabor conference last year where I met some of you.
I really like the initiative of this list and I just had a few comments
on the discussion on funding and the timing of the east-west meeting

about this funding:

I agree with all that was said so far: you have to decide if funders
impose restrictions on the projects applied for. The first restriction
is of course the funding rules (participants profile, host country of
project, subject of meeting), but there is a lot of flexibility in this.

Then funders might demand mentioning (advertising), this is not the case
with the youth programme of the council of europe though.

And about having this meeting in the Ukraine: we could have applied for
a meeting in the Ukraine but we had contacts with Olga in Berlin and we
didn't have a working relationship with anyone groups in Ukraine. So
this is not a restriction imposed by the funders but was an initial
decision we made in eyfa office when we decided what meeting to apply
for with that funding deadline of the council of europe.

Organising a meeting takes quite a lot of organisational effort and you
need a team to do it so one important critrion in making this decision
is the cotnacts we have in different countries. That's always a problem
EYFA faces: not knowing the situation on the ground, i.e. if there are
organisational structures (groups, team of activists) that can support
an internaqtional meeting with so many participants, collect all the
relevant materials for the meeting and the final report (bookkeeping
etc), prepare the structure of the meeting, do the follow-up etc.

Sometimes it goes really well, sometimes it's a disaster, and we have
not yet found the magic recipe for chosing partner organisations, or
indeed stabilise EYFA office staff enough so that we become better at
organisational matter as well. On the other hands, sometimes meetings
that end up being an organisational disaster lead to really nice
initiatives and others that are organised really well lead to
nothing....so who knows.

I think that this East-West meeting though is different from past EYFA
meetings. We decided not to focus on EYFA strategy this annual meeting
(which is traditionally always also EYFA's 'Winter Meeting') but
to get involved in content discussions ourselves on the East-West issue.
EYFA is going to hold eyfa strategy discussions about its network and
where it should be going on one day at Ecotopia instead (so please come
if you are interested).

I think the organisation of this east-west meeting with a broad group of
people who give their input such a long time in advance, in preparing
the programme and help with the logistics, is a first in EYFA's history
of organising meetings. And if this one works out, there's nothing
stopping us from applying for another follow-up meeting in the Ukraine
at some point. If you want to know more about the funding rules of the
Council of Europe, have a look at the following link:

http://galadriel.coe.int/fej/portal/media-type/html/country/null/user/anon/page/default.psml?js_language=en

The EYFA WIKI has a section on EYF funding as well, with a list of the
CoE Member States and 'downloadable' word documents that show you what
the on-line funding application forms look like:

http://eyfa.benn.org/wiki/EuropeanYouthFoundation#head-85cce964fd9e6e539379bf878c5e98845424a642

Have a look at Category A (international youth meeting) and Category B
(publications ; newsletters, information campaigns; exhibitions and the
production of audio-visual materials etc; the development of web sites
or the production of CD-Roms...). to get an idea of the nature of this
funding.

As funds go, youth programmes (from the Commission adn the Council of
Europe, not the European Council!) are always the least bureacratic ones
and the council of europe is one the best ones I think. But no
illusions about its politics: It was set up as a western 'humanitarian',
read anti-communist, counterpart to prevent a socialist take-over in
europe, but it still funds good projects... that's capitalisms
contradictory nature for you! Let's exploit it where we can, as long as
it doesn't corrupt our politics.

ESF: please give input

I would set the date of this meeting as far apart from the Greek
ESF as possible. Many people will be there and EYFA is also planning to
support an eastern europe presence at the ESF, we haven't discussed
yet how exactly (autonomous space meeting, travel reimbursement for
eastern europeans to the ESF, visa support etc...) but we would really
like this east-west meeting to feed into the ESF process, not clash with
it. Maybe you can all indicate if you were planning to go to the ESF and
if so how you think these two meetings could feed into each other?

Sorry for this rather long e-mail,
take care,

Katrin xxx





On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:19:48 -0700 (PDT)
Paki TV <paki.tv at dalitstan.org> wrote:

> From: Paki TV <paki.tv at dalitstan.org>
> To: moja tvoja ne ponimaj <spotykach at lists.nadir.org>
> Reply-To: paki.tv at dalitstan.org,
> 	moja tvoja ne ponimaj <spotykach at lists.nadir.org>
> Subject: [Spotykach] Council of Europe funding
> Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:19:48 -0700 (PDT)
> Sender: spotykach-bounces at lists.nadir.org
> X-Mailer: MIME-tools 5.41 (Entity 5.404)
> 
> --- coen at eyfa.org wrote:
> 
> >the idea to have the meeting in Ukraine is good, but because of the
> >'funding rules' this specific meeting must basically take place in
> >berlin, because of travel, accomodation tickets etc for the report
> >writing. It's the negative side of funding, they (Council of Europe)
> >demand this kind of logicstical evidence for a Berlin meeting.
> 
> >Coen
> >eyfa                                                                 
> >        
>                                                                     
     
> Perhaps we need to be aware of the impact of funding restrictions and
> how they relate to the objectives of funding organisations.
>                                                                     
    
> e.g. one of the objectives of the Council of Europe is:
> 
> "___ promote awareness of a European identity based on shared values
> and cutting across different cultures."                               
>                                          
> 
> For I while I participated with the Leornado programme, which was
> encouraging interchange between graduates across Europe, principally
> enabling people from Italy to engage in self-defined research projects
> in London. The last occasion of doing this ended up very traumatic  .
> . . which made me question objectives such as this.                   
>                                                      
> 
> On the other hand without funding, how much is possible?              
>                                                           
> 
> Fabian
> 
>  
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