Exchanging municipal expertise for tangible results
Exchanging municipal expertise for tangible results
CONNECT facilitates short-term exchanges between local and regional governments, initiated by specific requests from municipalities in EU partner countries. Then we find the perfect match – a colleague from a local and regional government in a European country who has the knowledge and experience our EU partner needs. More about us
What we do
Today, local and regional governments from all over the world can start making real progress on issues ranging from urban and rural planning to ecotourism, sanitation and more. How? By requesting local expertise through CONNECT.
Recent activity
Timeline
January 2015
Neven Mimica, the Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development signed a Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) to form strategic partnerships with five associations of local governments: CEMR & PLATFORMA, UCLG, UCLG-Africa, CLGF & AIMF.
The FPA signed with PLATFORMA includes the creation of a “delivery mechanism” – later named CONNECT – a mechanism to provide a quick and adequate response to worldwide requests for capacity development and learning in which European local and regional governments expertise is involved.
June 2016
PLATFORMA and VNG International presented CONNECT for the first time at the European Development Days 2016 (#EDD16)
November 2016
The pilot phase was launched on five topics and in four countries: food security (Uganda), human resource management (Cambodia), ecotourism (Colombia), and environmental health and sanitation (Ghana).
February 2017
CONNECT looked for municipal expertise to meet the demand. CONNECT secretariat (or “the Broker”) played an important role in searching European expertise. Once the expertise was validated, CONNECT facilitated the match between the European local and regional governments and their counterparts in the four countries.
The municipality of Agona West (Ghana) was CONNECTed to Almere (the Netherlands), Pursat municipality (Cambodia) was matched with Sandgerði (Iceland) and Angelópolis (Colombia) linked to Tarragona (Spain).
May 2017
First CONNECTion: exchange of knowledge and experiences in the field of sanitation in Ghana
All local stakeholders active in the field of environmental health and sanitation were invited to participate in a five-day knowledge exchange between Agona West and the municipality of Almere, the Netherlands. This resulted in a total of 40 participants, including environmental health officers, employees of various NGOs, as well as representatives from the local waste collection compagny (Zoomlion Ghana).
June 2017
Second CONNECTion: Sandgerði (Iceland) and Pursat (Cambodia) exchange on Human Resources Management
The Mayor and HR advisor from the Icelandic municipality of Sandgerði traveled to Pursat, a municipality that counts 397.107 inhabitants. Pursat had indicated that it needed strengthened capacity of the Pursat Municipal Council in HRM and especially in the municipal office. In the course of 8 working days, the two municipalities exchanged knowledge on personal motivation and personal leadership in particular, since the ‘hard’ aspects of HRM (recruitment, hiring, firing etc.) are the responsibility of the Provinces in Cambodia.
June 2017
Third CONNECTion: Angelópolis (Colombia) and Tarragona (Spain) working together in the field of ecotourism
Angelópolis is located very close to the rich and beautiful natural reserve of “El Romeral”, only 35 km away from Medellin. The city council is committed to put in place a sustainable and responsible eco-touristic strategy that will bring value to such natural resource and help revitalizing the local economy. To this end, the city council warmly hosted the one-week visit of two Spanish experts from the city of Tarragona for an enriching exchange of knowledge including group discussions, peer-to-peer learning and field visits.
December 2017
A call is launched to organise an exchange with Burkina Faso on Waste management.
February 2018
A call is launched to organise an exchange with Uganda on Local Economic Development (agriculture / water management).