Networking for Development: from town twining to a more efficient cooperation

The rise of the new actors involved in development cooperation initiatives worldwide, has brought a much more complex dimension to development cooperation policy. Apart from Bilateral Cooperation, NGDO and other Non-State Actors, Local Power has emerged as a central actor providing assistance to the most vulnerable. read more ...

Former initiatives have proven the significant contribution that combining different stakeholder’s features brings to development cooperation projects.  Given each actor’s features and constraints, combining LA added-values to NSA technical knowledge and long-term experiences, have provided increasing comprehensive and professionalised interventions. However, structured and sustainable development cooperation projects will only be totally effective once all actors are aware of their own potential and are able to get actively involved in such initiatives. Therefore, Networking for Development: From Town Twining to a more efficient cooperation aims specifically to strengthen Portuguese and German Local Authorities’ role as Development Cooperation actors. Efforts on improving all actors’ engagement have brought encouraging results. It is, then, important to provide Local Authorities useful tools and frameworks, which will not only support them to strengthen their ability to get involved in development cooperation initiatives, but also (and above all) will support them to connect to other stakeholders and engage in successful multi-actor partnerships. It comprises two central axes of intervention: on the one hand, it will promote dialogue, reflexion and best-practices sharing in development cooperation policy (gathering different types of actor – NGDO, NSA, LA, Financers – both at national and international level); and, on the other hand, it will provide training and technical guidance to Local Authorities (LA) directly involved in the action.