IREX Tajikistan

The Civil Society Support Initiative (CSSI), funded by USAID, is a three-year program designed to strengthen civil society with support for local civic organizations and community initiatives in Central Asia. IREX implements the program in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, seeking to transform the nongovernmental (NGO) landscape from a collection of discrete organizations to a credible sector that responds to community needs and delivers sustainable services.

The program currently supports fourteen regional Civil Society Support Centers (CSSCs) in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Each of the centers provides a range of services to organizations working in the community, including training, consultation, and information resources.

Civil Society Support Centers (CSSCs)
Through CSSI, IREX provides collaborative support to establish and expand Civil Society Support Centers (CSSCs). CSSCs are “intermediary support organizations” – local institutions that exist to provide training and grants to other NGOs. To help CSSCs become more effective in their work, IREX provides institutional development in the areas of fundraising, transparency and accountability, cost-effectiveness, and overall organizational capacity. This in turn improves CSSCs’ abilities to train their constituent NGOs in topics such as quality control, project evaluation, and inter-sectoral cooperation.

CSSCs offer a wide range of services to NGOs, CBOs and other interested groups including:

• Professional consultation on institutional development, strategic planning, project development and design, needs assessment, NGO registration, legal issues related to NGOs and other topics;
• Access to informational listservs, NGO and other databases, and a library of NGO-related materials, manuals, legislative profiles/documents, audio and videotapes;
• Access to technical resources – meeting space and equipment including fax, telephone, copier, computer, and printer;
• Monitoring and evaluation;
• Local grant committee administration;
• Representation services for local NGOs and CBOs;
• Trainings on NGO and community, project design, strategic planning, financial management, fundraising, advocacy, social partnership, human resources management, team building, conflict resolution, newsletter publication, participatory community appraisal (PCA), training techniques and methodology, coalition development, financial sustainability and other topics.

Civil Society Support Centers in Tajikistan

Besides the centers, the CSSI program includes additional initiatives designed to support the growth of the civil society in Central Asia. Program elements include the following:

CSSC Network
In addition to strengthening individual CSSCs, IREX is working to bring together CSSCs to establish structured networks, allowing them to function as unified advocates for NGO development at the country level. IREX also supports grassroots activism through an advocacy small grants program to be managed collaboratively with the CSSCs. IREX provides the training and assistance to enable the CSSC networks to manage the financial and programmatic aspects of these subgrants.

Institutional Grants
Institutional grants are designed to support the activity of well-developed NGOs that have successfully demonstrated both their commitment to the organization’s mission in a particular sector and substantial impact in that field. The grant is not project-based but is designed to strengthen the organization and deepen and expand their activities. Successive rounds of the Institutional Grants program takes place approximately every six months, focusing each time on organizations from different civil society sectors. The first round began in the Fall 2003 focusing on youth and elderly/pensioners and the second round – focusing on professional associations and organizations working with people with disabilities as the designated sectors.

Community Improvement and Advocacy Grants
IREX stimulates citizen involvement in the betterment of their communities and their decision making process at the local level through Community Improvement and Advocacy Grants. Administered by the CSSCs, the grants are available to local grassroots organizations that identify clear deficiencies in their communities and develop specific plans to address them. The grants will also help encourage community members (citizens, businesses, and local authorities) to communicate and partner with one another on concrete projects.

Civic Advocacy Initiative
The primary objective of the Civic Advocacy Initiative Grant Program is to build the capacity of leading NGOs in specifically targeted groups that would culminate in results-based national advocacy campaigns. The purpose of these grants initiatives is to increase the participation of NGOs in the democratic and political process. NGOs select one of three campaign focus areas: campaigns for democratic change, thematic campaigns, and professional association campaigns. The grant program targets skilled, professional NGOs that are capable of conducting national level advocacy campaigns that will engage the government and the community to address social issues.

NGO Policy Forums
The CSSI program provides funding to CSSC networks to host National NGO Policy Forums, bringing together interested stakeholders from the NGO, government, and business communities to discuss opportunities to improve government policies affecting NGOs. Policy forums are designed to stimulate debate on issues such as taxation, competitive procurement, and community foundations.

Legal Environment for NGOs
In partnership with ICNL, IREX is working to improve the legal knowledge of local NGOs at the grassroots level and improve the legal environment for NGO development at the regional and national levels. ICNL works with national and local government structures in each of the two republics to improve legislation pertinent to NGOs, such as laws governing procurement of services, community foundations, taxation, media, and licensing.

For more information and details, please see our website at: http://www.cssi.irex.tj