Vision

Time To Meet!

There are many obstacles affecting cooperation in the wider Black Sea region: historical traumas and political sensibilities, different levels of economic development and competition for resources, transport infrastructure and language barriers. However the Black Sea is also an area with shared history and cultures, a common environmental future and similar socio-economic experience.

We believe that now, more than ever before, solidarity and civil society cooperation are needed in this region.

Due to historical, political and geographical reasons, communication and cooperation among actors on all sides of the Black Sea have always been problematic. The same thing applies also to civil society in the region that, albeit sharing a common history and facing similar challenges has been generally unable to cooperate and create joint projects and contribute to shaping a common identity for the region.

There have been several initiatives aiming at creating regional networks of NGOs in the Black Sea region. The Black Sea Synergy launched by the European Union has the potential to yield more regional exchange and cooperation among local NGOs. There are several programmes aiming to support genuine exchange and communication among NGOs from all sides of the Black Sea (e.g. Open Society Institute through its East-East initiative and more recently the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation created by the German Marshall Fund of the United States).

The aim of the Black Sea NGO Forum is to capitalize on the successful initiatives in the region, to learn from what has worked wrong and to create new synergies among capabilities, ideas and projects of NGOs and institutional actors active in the region.

We aim to increase the level of dialogue and coordination among NGOs in the wider Black Sea region as well as to strengthen the advocacy capacity of NGOs in the Black Sea region in order to influence development strategies for the region.

The Forum has also the ambition to focus on creating a pool of concrete projects and on proposing concrete recommendations for regional NGOs and donors in order to increase the number and quality of regional partnerships and projects.

Our belief is that civil society in the region has a vocation and a mission to create bridges and set examples of genuine cooperation. In order to do that, it is Time to Meet!

Ionut Eugen SIBIAN

Chairman

Federation of Romanian Development NGOs (FOND)