Month: July 2018

América Solidaria accompanies us as partner since 2017 and we want you to know them. That is why this month we interviewed Mariana Gónzalez Sbarbi, Director of Partnerships to tell us more about the work of the organization.

Mariana, told us that they join RACI “since, from América Solidaria, we deeply believe in the power of generating alliances to articulate, in order to overcome child poverty, the development and sustainability of  vulnerable communities of the continent. In this way, we aim to globalize solidarity and project cooperation between countries for a fairer continent, breaking down borders and deepening our commitment to reality beyond our countries.”

América Solidaria, has been working for 15 years, assuming the commitment to build a continent where there is no girls or boys in poverty, with the conviction that a fairer and inclusive America is possible. With this objective, they promote a network of professional volunteers who are involved with the most vulnerable communities of the region, in pursuit of their development and sustainability. They currently have offices in 8 countries: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, United States, Haiti, Peru, Uruguay and Mexico and more of 90 professionals developing field projects in 11 countries of America.

About the utility that America Solidaria finds at the time of taking part of the Network, Mariana explained that in RACI they found “a space of articulation, of meeting and updating of novelties of the social sector, where not only they share local, regional and international opportunities, but also habilitate spaces of training, exchange and joint construction.” She added: “we believe it is an opportunity to join forces and align ourselves in the construction of a country and a continent responsible for their poverties.”

To carry out their job, they made alliances with other Organizations of the Civil Society, designing and managing the projects jointly. They are led by professional volunteers that work together with the most vulnerable communities of America, in order of improving their life quality and build more and better opportunities for children and young people.

“In Argentina, since 2015 we have been promoting projects of communitarian development, training and advocacy, with the objective of leaving installed capacity in the communities, empowering and promoting young people as agents of change, and build a committed and socially responsible outlook on issues of poverty and exclusion.

During 2015 and 2016, we worked in the neighborhood of La Boca and Los Ceibos, Federal Capital, with a focus on the family economic development. In 2016 we started working in Salta Capital, with a focus on labor insertion and  strengthening life projects; and since 2017, we promote the implementation of a psycho-pedagogical cabinet in Pilar, working to strengthen the entire educational community.

This year, we began to work in integral alphabetization in a day center in Florencio Varela, province of Buenos Aires; we arrived for the first time in Chaco, to start a project in four rural schools in Tres Isletas, with the objective of combating scholar dropouts. Currently, we continue working on the strengthen of life projects in Salta Capital and in Embarcación, Salta, we began to implement a new line of health promotion and  addiction prevention in a new educational center, reaching, in 2018 in every region where we are present, up to 4045 people in every community”.

As a result of their first year as a member of RACI, Mariana commented: “we are grateful for the opportunities made available to make visible urgent problematics of our country and continent, and the work that we are carrying out in order to overcome child poverty. We value the fluidity and effectiveness when it comes to create networks and channeling opportunities and calls, such as the willingness to support the dissemination of projects and generating spaces of exchange and joint dissemination.”

We thank Mariana for her time and for participating. If you want to know more about América Solidaria, you can do it entering in the following link: http://americasolidaria.org

Last tuesday June 19^th, a talk organized by RACI and Fundación Poder Ciudadano was held on the new Law N°27.401 – Criminal Liability Regime for Legal Entities.

The talk was dictated by Hugo Wortman Jofré, lawyer and president of Fundación Poder Ciudadano, to which almost 30 organizations internalized about the implications of the law, and how this would affect the Civil Society Organizations of the country.

Jofré introduced the law Criminal Liability Regime for Private Legal Entities, as a way of the State to transfer responsibilities of Criminal Law to the rest of the society. The international organizations tend to require that countries that introduce this kind of regulations and the validity of this law is a requirement of the OECD to admit Argentina a member.

Why do CSO fall under this law? Because the Civil Code contemplates- through Art. 148- the foundations as Private Legal Entities.

The objective of the law is to combate structural corruption, emphasizing the improvement of transparency and the ethical transformation of the organizations. The law seeks to eradicate the following crimes:

• Bribery and influence peddling,
• Negotiations incompatible with the exercise of public functions,
• Concussion,
• Illicit enrichment of officials and employees,
• Balance of aggravated false reports.

To be exempt from punishment, the organizations must comply with 3 (three) fundamental requirements:

1. Spontaneous denunciation of the anticipated crimes (the legal entity timely denounce the crimes).
2. Implementation of an adequate control system (Integrity Programme)
3. Return of the benefit obtained.

The Integrity Programme is a set of actions, mechanism and internal control procedures, that the institution must adopt to prevent and detect unlawful acts. This programme must include: a code of autonomous behavior, rules of prevention on the link with the public sector, and periodic internal training.

To receive public funds, it is a necessary condition to have an Integrity Programme.

The preparation of a Behavior Code for the NGO in Argentina was one of the suggestions with which Hugo Wortman Jofré ended his exhibition.

In 2016, the least developed countries received only 19.8% foreign aid. This amount is lower compared to the year 2015 where they received 23.7% of the budget granted for Development Assistance. The peak was in 2010, when these countries received 26.9% of Official Assistance. African countries such as the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Mozambique and Senegal are some of the countries that currently receive less aid than in 2010. This shows that, although 34 of the countries on the continent are considered the least developed countries (LDC) traditional bilateral aid to Africa continues to decline.

The reasons why this decrease on foreign aid is evident in recent years are varied. One reason is the growth of new conjunctures such as spending on refugees, for example. According to international conventions, donor countries can use the Official Assistance to Development to support refugees during their first twelve months. Therefore, between 2010 and 2016 the foreign aid to the most vulnerable countries decreased, while the expenses for refugees increased.

The imbalance between need and the real help can be explained by the criteria that countries use to direct aid. Typically, the donor countries use three criteria for this allocation: self-interest, need and merit. Self-interest is the most complex. Different providers have different levels of self-interest, and these levels may fluctuate between the different administrations within the same country. According to the voting patterns of the Assembly of the United Nations, the interests of States may have more value than the needs or merits of the destination countries. For example, States are more likely to tend to help their commercial partners, and those with whom they share political interests.

Taking into account these variables, the countries with more merit and the poorest do not receive majority of foreign aid. This fact is very clear and can be explained by the complexity of the self-interest, need and merit criteria. This raises the question: should there be another criterion for the allocation of foreign aid? In response, the Global Partnership for the Effective Development Cooperation emphasized the use of a fourth criterion: effectiveness. This criterion emphasizes transparency, responsibility, orientation and the inclusive collaboration of foreign aid.

So far, the criterion of effectiveness has received support from developed countries, countries in development and regional organizations such as African Union. In the future, it will be necessary to implement measures that quantify the effectiveness of foreign aid to understand and influence in the distribution and allocation of aid.

For more information, visit: https://bit.ly/2LT7VLL.

Missing a few months for the Summit of State leaders, the C20 Affinity Group calls the C20 Summit 2018.

On August 6^th and 7^th, will be held in Palacio San Martin, the Civil Group 20 Summit. The event will be the instance in which the organizations of Civil Society from different parts of the world and are part of C20 will deliver the final statement of the Affinity Group to the authorities of G20.

The meeting will last two days and will be divided into plenary sessions and workshops where all the Civil Society Organizations, both local and international, were invited  to present proposals for the realization of thematic workshops.

The C20 Summit will be the opportunity for the Civil Society to express its position on the most urgent problematics, related to the priorities set by the G20 and the agenda that countries have been working on in previous editions.

Organizations interested in attending the C20 Summit have time to register until August 1^st, 2018 at 11.59 PM Argentina time at the following link: https://bit.ly/2szQwQj

Throughout the week, part of the RACI team travelled to Alamty city in Kazakhstan as part of the Innovation for Change Latin America and the Caribbean, where they participated of the Interregional Meeting of centers from all over the world.

The event which was attended by more than 100 people, took place between June 18^th and 21^st with the aim of generating spaces for exchange and learning between the different regions in face of potentials initiatives that could arise. Through agile methodologies, co-designed sessions, evaluation models and spaces that allowed expressing the difficulties and preoccupations of each center, a creative and entrepreneurial with great challenges as results was achieved.

Innovation for Change LAC is an initiative in which RACI, in joint with the NGO Alliance organizations, Grupo FARO and Jóvenes contra la Violencia, has been working for more than 3 years, becoming increasingly involve in the concerns identified by the region: sustainability, transparency and enabling space.

From the Network, the team provides support to the activities carried out in order to unify the work of the Social Organizations of Latin America and the Caribbean.

As part of the ongoing collaboration that RACI carries out to strengthen Civil Society, this year the Network launches “Pulso Cívico – Survey of Leaders and Referents of Argentine Civil Society” whose objective is carry out a diagnostic study of the state of current Civil Society.

Pulso Cívico is a research project based on a quarterly frequency survey conducted over 12 months, with a view to gathering reliable and comparative information about the perception of the current state of civil society. This survey aims to analyze variables such as enabling space, the transparency and the type of difficulties faced by organizations, in addition to the conditions in which leaders and referents of the sector perform.

This project was originally launched in 2016 by the World Alliance for the Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) and replicated in more than twenty countries. On that occasion, RACI was the Network in charge of carrying out the pilot in Argentina.

The purpose of this study is to be able to access the perception of the leaders and referents of the third sector, allowing to identify the main tendencies of the Civil Society. Through this survey, it will be possible to map both the main difficulties and threats to which organizations are exposed, as well as the main tools and potentials that each one has.

The survey can be answered by more than one person from the same organization. Civil Society Organizations can participate, such as: Civil Associations, Foundations, Religious Entities, Mutuals, Cooperatives, Cooperators, Networks, Alliances and Federations, Neighbourhood Centers, Retirement Centers, Mutual Aid Associations, Development Societies, Popular Libraries, Universities and other educational establishments, Research Institutes, Neighbourhood Clubs or Sport Associations, Think Tanks, Business Foundations, Social Enterprises or Professional (unions), Grassroot Organizations, Community Organizations, Organizations linked to a community/nationality/ethnic origin, Organizations dedicated to cultural or artistic development and Charities/Assistance Organizations.

To complete the survey, access to the link available here.