New Alliance

A new alliance to build South-North Partnerships

ETC Foundation, Edukans, Heifer Netherlands, ILEIA Foundation, Louis Bolk Institute and RUAF Foundation – six development organisations based in the Netherlands - have joined hands to form an alliance to increase the impact of their work. They are building a programme in 18 countries in the South that supports the development efforts of civil society organisations and strategically links them to a global civil society movement for learning and policy change.

The alliance members share a vision of development that features self-development, empowerment, women’s rights, and sustainability. They work largely through self-governed networks that create South-North partnerships on the basis of equality leading to strong ownership of activities by southern partners. Based on experiences gained through such networking, the alliance is increasingly involved in similar issues also in the Netherlands.

The six organisations have presented a joint proposal to the Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation, ”Sustainable solutions for energy, agriculture and education: A Northern alliance for supporting action in the South”. It brings together three closely-linked sub-programmes that address several key development challenges.

The Energy Access for the Poor sub-programme will enable access of poor and marginalised communities to sustainable modern energy services to improve their livelihoods. It will develop and promote sustainable business models among public and private sector energy actors. Civil society organisations (CSOs) will work together to influence national energy access programmes to work with pro-poor and gender-sensitive business models.

The Sustainable Agriculture and Regional Food Systems sub-programme will reach out to small-scale rural and urban farmers, men and women, and empower them to sustainably produce sufficient food at affordable prices focusing on local and regional food markets. It will strengthen CSOs to interact with other key stakeholders, public and private, to effectively support small-scale farmers in developing these food systems and to create a supportive policy and institutional environment.

The Technical and Vocational Education and Training sub-programme will improve the quality and relevance of technical and vocational education and training as a crucial contribution to developing labour markets and economies. More community-based, non-formal skills and competence-based training will be introduced in order to match education with work. CSOs will lobby at (sub-) national level for access to competence building of poor women and men and incorporation of the new approaches in formal curricula and policies.

Working with an extensive network of international partners allows these three sub-programmes to build capacities of these partners, to create avenues for dissemination of critical information and experience and to bring local experiences to the global level to for international policy change.

The combination of expertise in the fields of agriculture, energy and technical and vocational training through the three sub-programmes also creates space for initiatives on cross-cutting themes such as the use of energy in agriculture with attention to alternatives such as bio-fuels, adaptation to climate change and up-scaling and formalising learning processes.

To download Management Summary of MSF II Proposal, click here.