Deadline: 5-Oct-20
Are you interested in working on an organizational capacity building issue? Do you wish to foster your relationship with civil society organizations abroad? Do you want to collaborate with civil society organizations that face similar organizational challenges?
The Civil Society Exchange (CSE) Program invites civil society organizations and initiatives to form and foster partnerships between Turkey and the European Union to strengthen their organizational capacity. The program is a 6 – 8 months international mobility program for civil society organizations and initiatives in Turkey and Europe.
The program structure is based on the capacity through the mobility model that the Center for Civil Society Studies and MitOst developed over the years. Civil Society Exchange Program enables participants to develop a strategy with their international partners to tackle a mutual organizational issue, to implement a solution for a specific problem, and to improve their internal capacity through cross-border collaboration.
The Civil Society Exchange Program aims to support the organizational capacity building process of civil society organizations in Turkey and Europe through cross-border mobility in a non-formal, mutual learning environment. The long-term goal of the program is to increase the organizational sustainability of the CSOs based in Turkey and Europe. The program enables partnerships to work on a common organizational issue and to develop a model for themselves, which they implement in their organizations.
The main objective is that participants are profiting from this process of mobility that is provided them to work together. Partners either visit each other or they plan a little residence program in one of the organizations, have meetings, study visits, job shadowing, or other activities that would support both organizations in the partnership to develop their model.
Program Benefits
- Meet new partners from both Turkey and Europe
- Discover good practices and fruitful exchanges with other civil society actors
- Establish or foster a relationship with one or several civic initiatives
- Strengthening the internal capacity of the organization
- Become part of a Europe and Turkey wide network
- Funding of applicant partnership (3,500 EUR)
- Support from the program team throughout collaboration
- Reimbursement of travel and living expenses during the opening and final meetings where you will be meeting other Exchangers.
Eligibility Criteria
- Participant organizations can be a social company, foundation, civil initiative, cooperative, or association. The only criteria are that the applicant partnership should be composed of a non-profit entity from Turkey and another from a European Union country.
- The program seeks organizations working in ecology, gender, human rights, children’s rights, women’s rights, formal and/or non-formal education, urban development, discrimination, youth, or other similar topics. Entities from different fields are encouraged to apply.
- Applicants need to identify an internal organizational issue that they would like to focus on. To facilitate capacity building, two representatives from each organization are expected to participate in the program.
- The program seeks for the long term, committed persons who are paid staff, members or work on a voluntary level with the organization.
- Please consider that after the program, participants are expected to implement the model they have developed with their partners.
- The working language of the program is English. Thus, proficiency in English is mandatory.
- The program highly encourages people from under-represented groups to apply.
- Civil Society Exchange supports either new or existing partnerships between civil society organizations from Europe (EU countries) and Turkey.
For more information, visit https://civilsocietyexchange.org/exchange-program/