Section 5: Partnership Development and Sustainability
ECOLOGIA was founded in 1989 and Ecoline was founded in 1994. Joint ECOLOGIA/ Ecoline projects and activities embrace a wide area of environmental issues both in the Russian Federation and in the Newly Independent States. However, public participation in environmentally sound decision making is the central point of ECOLOGIA/Ecoline collaboration. Public participation has been a core value in the mission of both organizations since their founding.
IREX/SPAN project helped to strengthen the 'virtual office', enabling the U.S. ECOLOGIA office and Russian Ecoline office to working very smoothly and intensively together. The extensive and effective use of e-mail has been institutionalized through mutually agreeable policies concerning the content and timeliness of e-mail communications. We also agreed to exchange phone calls to agree upon the most important subjects and administrative stages of the project.
The most important achievement of the project concerning our partnership was the improvement of our joint position on international environmental management arena. We have been recognized as an international team with solid experience in the wider promotion and implementation of Environmental Management Systems in countries in transition. We have built a unique reputation of professional and collaborating NGOs offering capacity building, staff training and methodological support to various stakeholders in the field of EMS and related subjects.
An important outgrowth of the project is that not only the partnership between Ecologia and Ecoline was improved but the partnership between ECOLOGIA, Ecoline and many other environmental NGOs was improved. Substantial progress that was made nationally and regionally on improved relationships with our key partners in such regions as Tomsk, Sverdlovsk (Ekaternburg), Vladimir and Povoljie, including the Republic of Chuvashia.
Section 6: Comments and/or Suggestions for IREX
IREX assistance through out the project has been excellent. We appreciate the pro-active and open attitude of the IREX managers who have been providing the necessary guidance, support and showing a strong interest in the project's progress.
Perhaps, the only suggestion we could make is to consider organizing networking events/mechanisms for project partners more often (not just at the beginning of the scheme but through out the implementation period). It would help to strengthen links between similar or complementary projects, to avoid likely overlapping and to exchange the best lessons and approaches as soon as they are learned/tested.
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