The Balkan Civil Society Development Network (BCSDN) and the CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness invite civil society organisations to their regional workshop on CSO and private sector engagement in development partnerships, entitled “Unusual Allyship for Common Good: CSO – Private Sector Cooperation”.
The event, which will take place online on 3 March at 2PM CET (2PM in Brussels, 9PM in Manila), will bring together a number of speakers to discuss the possibilities for engagement between civil society and the private sector in the context of development cooperation. Through this workshop, the BCSDN hopes to inspire other CSOs to initiate such partnerships that go beyond the mobilisation of corporate resources and donations.
As the BCSDN states, “while trying to rethink our approaches to further and more effective civil society empowerment, we need to ensure sustainable partnerships with partners who share our realities, but who can at the same time offer other perspectives. Recognising the ever-increasing need for broader stakeholder buy-in to achieve ambitious sustainable goals, CSOs must better engage with other actors such as governments, donors, but also the business sector, to work towards more effective development cooperation.”
“Together, we will explore lessons learned and good practices of working together for common goals, and share examples of making positive changes in our communities,” adds BCSDN.
Register for the event here, and find the programme below:
AGENDA
14:00 – 14:15
Opening remarks (Anja Bosilkova-Antovska, BCSDN Acting Director General)
Setting the tone (Ana Zbona, Head of the Civil Liberties and Human Rights Defenders Programme at the Business & Human Rights Resource Center)
14:15 – 15 : 00
Business and Human Rights: The example of cooperation between CSOs and the banking sector in Northern Macedonia (Nikica Kusinikova, Executive Director of the NGO Konekt)
Speed Dating: Building Bridges between CSOs and Business (Kostantina Keruti, Programme Manager at Partners Albania)
Innovation and Change for the Common Good: Cooperation between Start-ups and CSOs (Christina Forester, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Heartbeats Innovations and Communication)
Joint efforts for quality policy making: Understanding each other’s experiences (Anamarija Velinovska, Project Manager at the Institute for Democracy “Societas Civilis” – Skopje)
Hope in entrepreneurship: REDI Recycling (Asib Zakir – Programme Director of the NGO REDI)
15:10 – 15:40
Discussion