The project– part of a new phase of the Civil Society Facility for the Southern Neighbourhood – adopts an integrated approach involving other programmes and instruments supporting civil society organisations.
In order to support an inclusive, participatory, empowered civil society and democratic space in Southern Neighbourhood countries, the project seeks to improve the skills of civil society leaders, support EU-CSO structured dialogue processes, and improve the DG NEAR HQ’s and EU Delegations’ capacities to work with civil society. A more empowered and dynamic civil society sector – along with higher levels of dialogue between EU and CSOs – will contribute to more inclusive, pluralistic, accountable and participatory democracies in the Sothern Neighbourhood countries.
The project Strategic Approach is based on the following strategic principles defined to secure achievement of the project results:

• Supporting a coherent region-wide approach towards civil society in the Southern Neighbourhood
• Implementing a Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach
• Creating an enabling environment for policy change
• Delivering prompt and well-organised deployment of technical expertise across multiple policy fields to support dialogues
• Promoting gender mainstreaming approaches
• Implementing an integrated and mutually reinforcing approach towards awareness-raising
• Stimulating the active engagement of the target beneficiaries.

The activities are implemented in full partnership with the target beneficiaries in the design and implementation of Technical Assistance measures (through collaborative workshops, peer networks, training-of-trainers programmes, mentoring schemes, working groups, etc.). The transfer of a range of knowledge products (e.g. studies, good practice compendiums), tools and guidelines will further ensure that the project measures are internalised, owned and shared in a way that will guarantee sustainability.

Our activities:
PuntoSud will contribute to the implementation with some selected non-key expertise