Founded in 2008, Vietnamese Non-governmental Organization and Climate Change (VNGO&CC) with nearly 300 organizational/individual members have affirmed their roles in mobilizing resources and promoting the image of Vietnamese civil society organizations, encouraging policy advocacy as well as supporting its members in capacity building on climate change. With the aim of reviewing the network’s activities over the past year and preparing an action plan for the next year, on December 27, 2013, the year-end meeting of VNGO&CC management board took place at the Centre of Sustainable Rural Development (SRD) office, participated by representatives from some member NGOs of the network.

One of the main focuses of the meeting’s agenda was introducing the new project named “Strengthen the role of Vietnamese NGOs in climate change communications and policy advocacy”, implemented by the network from 2014 to 2015 with funding from AusAid. In addition, the participants have entered in-depth discussions on how to create an effective working mechanism among the network’s members to implement the project activities next year, especially the project launching workshop, which is planned to organized on February 19, 2014.

Another emphasis of the meeting was establishing a plan to conduct Activity 1.4.2 “Supporting documentation of climate change response initiatives”. All attendees reached an agreement on the need of creating a set of specific criteria to evaluate climate change adaption initiatives. In more detail, it’s important to collect all information about models that were already applied, and assess their pros and cons to select the most effective ones. For the initiatives which are under experiment, the Network will oversee the application process and document them if they prove their feasibility.

To sum up, reflecting on their achievements over the past year, sharing experiences to better implement the upcoming activities as well as developing a clear working mechanisms across the network are results of the year-end meeting of VNGO&CC. Filled with thorough discussion, the meeting was a valuable chance for all members of the network to get their work into gear. They all hope to continue making meaningful contributions in mobilizing resource among CSO and connecting NGOs together and with other partners, which thereby helps improve the efficiency of climate change response activities.

(Source: srd.org.vn)