During the second half of 2009, the “Civil Society Support Program” was closely collaborating with different representatives of the civil society on the issues of the sustainability of the non-governmental organizations. This process became the basis for “NGO Sustainability Initiative” project that supports sharing of experience between Georgia and East European NGOs.
The above mentioned project was the main reason of the Georgian NGOs (13 participants) travel to Czech Republic and Slovakia. The local non-governmental organizations (Association for International Affairs) conducted presentations for their colleagues and shared their experience with them.
Members of the Georgian organizations visited local NGOs and got familiar with the legislation beneficial for the development of the non-governmental organizations. They also learnt about innovative approaches and activities for the fund-raising and discussed the issues related to the relationship between the civil society and the government.
The visit that lasted for one week is the beginning of the future collaboration on the NGO sustainability issues. The foundation is planning to organize a conference in Georgia in summer and publish the publication based on the presentations made during the conference.
The group of travelers from Georgian side consisted of the representatives of the following non-governmental organizations: “Civil Society Institute”, “United Nations Association of Georgia”, “Transparency International – Georgia”, “Civitas Georgica”, “Strategic Research and Development Center of Georgia”, “GTC – Training and Consulting Center”, “Partners Georgia”, “Global Initiative on Psychiatry”, “Collaboration for Equal Rights”, “Psychometric/Consulting Association” and “Children of Georgia’.