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Parent Category: Resources

NGO Forum Small Grants Facility

Global Partners in Action: NGO Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development: Invest in Health, Rights and the Future

Berlin, Germany, 2 to 4 September 2009

To mark the 15 year anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Global Partners in Action: NGO Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Development is being held in Germany to strengthen NGOs working in partnership to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights for sustainable development in an uncertain and interdependent world.

The Government of Germany and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) will co-host the forum; for more info visit: http://www.globalngoforum.org/.

Global Partners in Action is led by NGOs and is for NGOs, with emphasis placed on ensuring significant participation from the Global South and of young people. Global Partners in Action will be a highly interactive working meeting. Participants will be able to contribute to approximately 30 breakout sessions, as participants, facilitators, resource persons or rapporteurs. In addition, orientation sessions and regional meetings are being planned for the first day. Participants will furthermore have the opportunity to network and share their work and experiences in a marketplace and at a global café.

Plenaries featuring high level speakers will also inspire Global Partners in Action. Finally, all participants will be welcome to assist in the drafting process for the Call to Action throughout the duration of the Forum and outcomes from discussions in various sessions will feed into the Call to Action and an NGO Action Plan.

The Call to Action is to be an advocacy tool for NGOs to share with government and parliamentarians immediately following Global Partners in Action. The NGO Action Plan is foreseen as a medium term road map to ensure that Global Partners in Action charts a way forward for enhanced efforts toward the achievement of the ICPD Programme of Action in synergy with the MDGs by 2015 and beyond. There will be 400 participants at Global Partners in Action. Out of these, 225 will come from the Global South and will, as far as possible, be fully funded to attend. There are 100 spots for Northern NGOs, these will not generally be funded to attend. However, there will be no registration fee. The forum steering group aims to ensure diverse representation from as many countries, regions and NGO's working in different fields of health and development as possible. Youth participation is also a priority and a commitment has been made to have at least 25% of participants under the age of 30.

The Global Partners in Action NGO Forum welcomes applications from individuals representing NGOs around the world that:

* Are committed to the principles of the ICPD Programme of Action
* Focus on activities that address key aspects of the ICPD Programme of Action (for example: sexual and reproductive health and rights, women's rights, HIV and AIDS, youth participation, gender equity)

* Work at either a local, national, regional or international level
* Are interested and able to share best practices, lessons learned and areas for capacity building
* Can commit to collaborative follow-up to the Global Partners in Action NGO Forum, guided by the NGO Action Plan and Call to Action that will be produced during the Forum.

The deadline for applications is Monday 25 May 2009. Applications will be reviewed by a Selection Committee, which has established several measures to ensure a transparent and objective process.

Finally, national discussions leading up to the Forum are being planned where possible. The objective is to promote discussion among NGOs on key questions related to the assessment of ongoing progress and needs, successful approaches, remaining barriers, ways forward and additional needs realting to the ICPD agenda.  These discussions aspire to have broad participation and to inform the Forum and any subsequent follow-up efforts and to promote intensified discussion of how to implement the ICPD Programme of Action.