Meeting to exchange EUROsociAL results in Colombia

Nearly 20 institutions met in Colombia to exchange experiences regarding the country’s participation in EUROsociAL, a programme managed by the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP) and funded by the European Union.

The meeting, held in Bogotá, served to demonstrate the impact of Colombia’s participation in EUROsociAL. Thanks to the positive results obtained through their participation in the programme, the numerous institutions present at the meeting showed interest in taking part in its next phase.

The meeting, the first of seven to be held in coming months in other countries in the region, was organised by the Presidential Cooperation Agency of Colombia (APC-Colombia), the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP), the Instituto Italo-Latinoamericano (IILA), the Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli (CISP), and the European Union Delegation in Colombia.

Members of the inaugural table for this country meeting included a public policy expert from Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli, CISP, Carlos Tassara, and the Director of APC-Colombia, Alejandro Gamboa, who encouraged the institutions of his country to “reflect on the advances of this programme for strengthening social cohesion”. He was accompanied by José Luis de Francisco, Head of Cooperation of the European Union Delegation in Colombia, who highlighted EUROsociAL as “a different mode of cooperation which takes advantage of the context in which it operates”. For his part, Francesco Chiodi, the programme’s Coordinator of Social Policy and Employment, indicated that “EUROsociAL has leveraged European and Latin American expertise by following a peer-to-peer cooperation methodology that is also used among European Union countries”.

Also participating in the meeting were the Italian and Spanish Embassies and the programme’s operational partners: Expertise France, Juvenile Justice Observatory of Belgium (IJJO), and the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI).

During the discussion, among other topics, the participants talked about what was achieved with EUROsociAL, the desire of the participating organisations to continue this cooperation with the programme, and the incorporation of certain new aspects, such as support in the implementation and territorialisation of actions, work with civil society, and the inclusion of the gender perspective, already contemplated in the next phase.

EUROsociAL, a programme financed by the European Union, will continue learning the impressions of the different stakeholders who participated in this second phase of the programme in another six countries, with Peru being the next stop (Lima, 15th March), followed by Paraguay (Asunción, 18th March) and Costa Rica (San José, 31st March). The country meetings of Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 5th April), El Salvador (San Salvador, 13th April) and Ecuador (Quito, 18th April) will be held in April.