At the occasion, the conference covered areas like communications, futures, funding, leadership, influencing and programmes. The participants and Forus Chairwoman Iara Pietricovsky seized also the opportunity to interrogate the challenges facing by global civil society. 

On March 21, Bond identified several highlights to resume its Annual Conference and Awards 2019: 

1. Driving equality in our own workforces 

Despite NGOs’ fights against inequalities, workforces still face challenges in diversity, inclusion and unequal pay. The conference was the occasion for female leaders from across international development to discuss how organisations can encourage a culture of equality. The attendees were also asked what are the biggest challenge to diversity and inclusion they are facing in their sector. Check out the video here.  

Stories shouldn’t be designed to fit organizations’ needs and donors’ expectations. The attendees highlighted the necessicity of NGOs to encourage storytellers to tell their own stories. Indeed, NGOs need to break stereotypes and to tell authentic stories is becoming more and more urgent. Building trust and communicating complexity are key to rearticulate and rebalance our communications.  

Throughout the conference, the power of local organizations and the importance of their knowledge were an important topic. It is the role of INGOs to help redress the imbalance of power and resources. Civil society organizations agreed that higher institutions and donors have to establish an equal and an interactive partnership with local NGOs. Empowering local organisations is one of the challenge our sector need to achieve.  

The SDGs represent an opportunity for INGOs, local organizations and CSOs to advocate for real change. The implementation of the Agenda2030 is a way to solve the root causes of development issues and provide a crucial focal point for measurement. 

Leaders from environment and development NGOs identified new approaches for tackling climate change in the next 10 years. But it is also all governments’ duty to treat climate change for the emergency that it is. To better our approaches for climate change the international development and humanitarian sectors are witnessing the urgent importance of cross-sector collaboration.   

The attendees agreed that international development instutions or INGOs can no more continue to speak for people.  INGOs cannot speak on behalf of the global south but pay more attention of local CSOs and populations needs. Campaigners called for civil society to reframe the current negative narratives around activism to reverse the increasing vilification of global civil society.  

Organizations tend to focus so much on the challenges and issues facing by our societies that they forget to appreciate their achievements. The Bond International Development Awards celebrated the life-changing people and projects in the Bond network.  

Check out the winners in all the eight categories here. 

Bond and Forus, the global network for civil society gathering 69 National NGO Platforms (NPF) and 7 Regional Coalitions (RC) from Africa, America, Asia, Europe and Pacific, share a common mission to bring about change in the world. Empowering civil society in fighting for another approach to politics in order to transform it into a real space for the construction of values, ethics and the right of opposition, are the ways to effective social change.