Planning and implementing capacity building within the EEA Grants

Capacity building is an essential feature of EEA Grants civil society programmes, which is highly valued by supported CSOs. Fund Operators are expected to actively support the capacity development of project promoters and wider civil society. However, Fund Operators have varying levels of expertise and capacity for this role.

Fund Operators for the Active Citizens Fund (ACF) programmes, implemented as part of EEA Grants 2014 – 2021, faced additional challenges to their role in supporting civil society capacity development due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Programmes had to adapt planned capacity-building activities, and CSOs reported setbacks to their organizational development, particularly in the field of fundraising and financial sustainability.

In this context, the Fund Operator for the ACF Greece, in partnership with the Fund Operators for the ACF in Romania and Portugal, jointly organised two training and regional exchange workshops to support ACF Fund Operators and CSOs in their capacity development role. The first event was a two-day regional exchange workshop on planning and implementing capacity-building programmes. The second was a training-of-trainers (ToT) workshop focused on core capacity-building topics. The workshops, which took place in Athens between 21-25 November 2022, brought together participants from 14 ACF programmes, and representatives of the Financial Mechanism Office (FMO), the Norwegian Embassy in Greece and CSOs.

The Report from the regional exchange workshop is available here.