Donations to the third sector are currently scarce in Mexico, as a result, levels of overall investment in the projects supported by civil society are rather low.
At the same time, although organizations are accountable and report to various authorities, society at large does not know about such information, or simply do not have easy access to it.
Fondos a la Vista has developed a platform to facilitate information about civil society organizations committed to social development and their donors.
The project has as its main objective to promote transparency and accountability in the sector and to promote trust in private donations and organizations.
It also aims to the recognition of the work and commitment of CSOs that already are have good transparency practices in place.
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Through the project instructive seminars for teachers and high school pupils were organized during the school year under the name “Against Corruption””. Politics and economy, sociology and ethics teachers were invited, as well as any interested teachers of other subjects.”
The project consisted in training seminars and an analysis report. Its goals were to: identify specific corruption risks within the process of acquisition of citizenship, evaluate their occurring probability and their level of harmful effect; develop probable solutions and propose short and long term recommendations; sensitize and train the staff of the Naturalisation Board on the issues of corruption risks and their minimization.
The general goal of the project was to contribute for the improvement of the work of the public administration by achieving better partnerships between organizations from the civil society sector and the administration. Development and implementation of mechanisms for civil society control and monitoring lay at the core of the project. Some of its main activities included: 1. analyses of best practices in twelve municipal administrations in the region of Varna; 2. assessment of the deficiencies in current work of the administrations and formulation of recommendations for improvement; 3. development and dissemination of a report regarding the “best practices”” in the work of the targeted municipalities; 4. realization of educational seminars for experts from the local administrations with regard to transparency and good governance; 5. realization of seminars and round tables between representatives from the civil society and the administration in order to improve and enhance long-term communication channels between the two groups.”
The project aims at creating a set of efficient monitoring tools for measuring local elected officials’ mandate performance in – between elections, during electoral periods and six months after elections – with the direct scope of empowering civil society to accurately scrutinize the local governance act and hold elected representatives accountable for their work.
Seeing there is a lack of budget transparency, the project aimed to train staff in smaller municipalities in Serbia to monitor the budget.
This regional programme for Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia aims strenghting implementation Access to Information law. The programme also aims at involving civil society in actively promoting and monitoring law.
Project goals:
– To improve the quality of Access to Information laws;
– To monitor and encourage harmonization with European standards;
– To maintain popular and media support for anti-corruption initiatives;
– To generate a body of knowledge on Access to Information for use in the region and beyond.
The one-year project was implemented by the TI National Chapters in the respective countries and coordinated by he TI International Secretariat.
The project included the following activities:
– Improving legal standards;
– Testing effectiveness of laws/analysis of obstacles to implementation;
– Assisting users of the law;
– Improving government capacity to implement laws;
– Exploring development of legal cases (e.g. preparation of pilot cases to challenge implementation of FOIA laws, or provisions of information to those preparing cases).
The anti-corruption counselling center was established. A publication (cookbook) “How to face a corruption”” was one of the project outputs as well as the special internet section and the anti-corruption library. A workshop for the NNO representatives was organised durign the first year of the project implementation. The number of clients (individuals, companies, public authorities) and cases assited by the Center (available at Center’s Activity Report of 2006 and 2008) amounts to several hundreds every year. Lawyers employed by the TIC assist the individuals at the court if necessary and the TIC also organises public debates in the municipailities where particular case takes place with good results and impacts on transparency of the local governments´processes. The project is ongoing. There has been different funding every year. The anti-corruption number 199, operated by TIC (outsourcing), is funded by the Ministry of Interior. Some of the clients of the anticorruption line 199 are consequently assisted by the Center.”
The project was aimed to raise awareness on public procurement issues, mostly possible lack of transparency in procurement of EU funds. The project was implemented in 4 EU countries – Lithuania, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia. The output of the project was the trainings toolkits and the organized public procurement trainings for public officials in each of the participating countries (mostly one training per country).
The general aim of the project was to develop an effective and functional partnership between the structures of the civil society and the municipal administrations through better transparency and accountability of the local administrations. In order to achieve its goals the project aimed at: improving the organizational structures at administrative level and improving the procedures for civil control over the municipal strategies for development. Some of the main activities of the project include: 1. analyses and evaluation of eight strategies for development in eight selected municipalities; 2. defining the role, which the civil society plays in the development and realization of the strategies by analyzing good practices in other countries in the EU; 3. educational seminars for the representatives of the civil society on how can they influence the strategies in order to increase the transparency and accountability of the process. 4. realization of a conference for the dissemination of the project results.
The project aims to increase public confidence in the judiciary by assessing the status quo and offering solutions. Three thematic components that are focused on (1) The Judicial Code of Ethics (2) the assessment system of judges’ performance and skills (3) judges’ disciplinary action and other forms of accountability.
The UPAC Project aimed at strengthening Ukrainian institutions’ capacities in their anti-corruption efforts. It comprised three components: 1. Support to the creation of the strategic and institutional framework against corruption; 2. Strengthening of capacities for the prevention of corruption. 3. Strengthening of the legal framework and the enforcement of anti-corruption legislation. Although this was a project implemented by the Council of Europe office in Kyiv, it did involve NGOs into their activities.
The project aimed to:
– support the development of accountable MPs in the national and European Parliaments through systematic monitoring of the concrete activity in these bodies and through exposing this activity to the citizens of Romania;
– strengthen civil society capacity of monitoring and tracking MPs activity, by stimulating the creation of a civic platform in the region.
The project objectives are: Identifying and formulating international standards and norms in regard to the prosecutor’s office. This includes the following: 1. operative standards by which the effectiveness of the prosecutor’s office can be judged; 2. standards regarding ethics and human rights by which the activities of the prosecutor’s office can be judged; 3. employing the existing mechanisms for ensuring the independence, efficient functioning and effectiveness of the prosecutor’s office, as well as finding out the best practices; 4. promoting debates about the need to reform the prosecutor’s office in Bulgaria and seeking methods for its better organization, effectiveness and efficient functioning; 5. turning the research into a reliable tool for making reforms. The tool itself should serve before the institutions which have tendencies towards reform and thus promote the debate concerning the prosecutor’s office in the countries which urgently need such changes.
Goals of the project:
Provide the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina with an effective instrument for combating corruption in their everyday lives;
Provides citizens with free legal advice for reporting complaints of suspected corruption of public officials, or where the citizen is a victim or has knowledge of corrupt practices;
Makes information on citizens’ rights easily available and accessible to the public;
Raises citizen’s awareness of their rights and possibilities to take actions against corruption;
Opens a dialogue with the national institutions to support the establishment of appropriate mechanisms for citizens’ complaints in order to systemize and organize fight against corruption;
Monitor the work of responsible public institutions during processing of cases of corruption.
PROJECT ACTIVITIES:
Case studies of citizen’s complaints against corruption, using statistics and qualitative examples (who complains about what, which agencies were involved, which authorities were most vigilant in pursuing corruption, etc.);
Monthly press releases and reports to the public;
“Should I complain?” an ethical brochure for citizens about why individual action is important for combating corruption;
Training manual for government agencies on dealing with citizen’s complaints and obligations under freedom of information and conflict of interest;
Cooperation with journalists and radio and TV broadcasters on small programs about corruption cases.
Training project with the goal of reducing the scope of corruption in the public administration in the territorial self-governing units (municipalities and regions); it aimed at increasing the capacity of local government officials in detecting individual cases of corruption, applying suitable anti-corruption tools to cases of corruption, evaluating the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures in local government authorities and training on law on conflict of interest by tailored trainings.
The project aimed to increase the capacity of victims and witnesses of corruption to solve their complaints through legal and administrative means.
To support the growth of the strength of the Media in the struggle against trafficking, reinforcement of efforts for respect of human rights, stability and construction of a new mentality of civil and human values. The project focused on five cities in Albania.
The goals of the project included: To support the organized citizens
Project goal: the development of a training course for youth on Combating Corruption.
The project was realized in the course of Coalition 2000 and USAID Open Government Initiative Project: “Civil Society Against Corruption”” – Small Grants Program. It aimed to identify the structure of corrupt practices related to SMEs in the country and to provide assessment of the inflicted losses in the business sector i.e. еstimate the costs of corruption in the SME sector. The project activities include surveys and publication of a book: “”Do-it-yourself”” Manual of Tools Designed to Build Ethical and Transparent Corporate Culture For SMEs.”
The project objective was the development and pilot check-up of an approach to introducing governance through organizational excellence (“Commitment to Excellence””) in the context of two Bulgarian municipalities. Its activities included: 1. establishing organization within the municipality for implementation of the project; 2. ensuring the active and informed participation in the training of all persons, related to the project implementation; 3. selection of a competent project manager and team members; 4. communication and, if needed, clarification of the ideas and concepts of Organizational Excellence among the organization’s employees; 5. self-evaluation, identification of strengths and fields to be improved, as well as the priority of individual tasks; 6. development, deployment and communication of an action plan; 7. commitment to the realization of constant improvements.”
Project aims :
To develop anti-corruption programme and methodical recommendations for the universities students from six Bosnia and Herzegovina universities;
To introduce developed programme and methodical recommendations to the Ministries of Education at all the BiH governance levels;
To test anti-corruption education strategies and methods at the universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina;
To support the programmes and standards of education by promoting democratic values and attitudes;
To demonstrate possibilities of fight against corruption;
To raise awareness among youth about the character, spread, and impact of corruption;
To establish networks facilitating the creation of a permanent international youth forum that ensures sustainability in the global fight against corruption by creatingm the next generation of corruption fighters;
To add new momentum to the existing anti-corruption movement.
Project objectives :
To train student’s and profesor’s further responsible for the dissemination activities;
To educate student’s about National Integrity System, and give the best input for political science, civic education, history, ethics, psychology and informations;
To introduce the concept of corruption, its causes and effects (knowledge);
To motivate student’s for the fight against corruption;
To lay the foundation for the recruitment of the next generation of corruption fighters by informing youth about the dangers of an omnipresent and unconstraint corruption for their future and showing them a way to contribute to initiatives that try to change this situation;
To endorse the creation of a youth-run global network against corruption that adds new impetus to existing anti-corruption initiatives through fresh and original perspectives and enthusiasm of the next generation;
To train them in possible counter measures through the participation in key workshops, online discussions and networks with civil society;
To design an action plan together with student participants that steers follow-up initiatives and creates sustainable networks among youth, TI, universities, local and regional organizations.
A system of NGOs certification tailored to the Czech environment was to be developed, drawing on examples from Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. Workshops were organised and a feasibility study conducted, showing different models of certification.
