Decentralised cooperation high on the agenda of Euskal Fondoa’s new board

The General Assembly of Euskal Fondoa, an association that brings together 115 Local Basque Cooperating Entities renewed their governing bodies on January 17 at an event held at Palacio Aiete in San Sebastián. The Mayor of Salvatierra (Agurain in Basque) was elected new president of Euskal Fondoa. This is the first plenary session after the formation of the new local and regional governments in June 2019.

As a preamble, a balance of the activities carried out in the previous period 2015-2019 was carried out in different areas of coordination, promotion and management of international development cooperation activities and the City of Derio (Bizkaia) was welcomed as a new entity associated.

During the meeting, the positions of the Board of Directors for the period 2020-2023 were appointed. The mayor of Agurain (Álava), Ernesto Sainz Lanchares, led a consensus proposal between the different political sensibilities represented in the Association to assume the maximum responsibility of the governing bodies. Thus, he takes over from Maite Etxebarria, mayor of Abanto-Zierbena, who has chaired the Association since November 2015.

In his presentation speech, Ernesto Sainz thanked the trust placed in him and assumed as main challenges to face a general context of stagnation of the sector in the institutional agendas, overcome the difficulties to build new alliances and encourage the active participation of the associated entities; also trying to add more local governments in this task.

He also advanced the main management guidelines that he will promote at the head of the Board of Directors in the framework of a new Strategic Plan 2020-2023:

• To explore new ways of collaboration with other stakeholders (public and/or private) in sharing this strategy
• To represent the variety of decentralised cooperation players before organisations and forums linked to international cooperation (such as the Basque Council for Development Cooperation, the Inter-Institutional Commission for Development Cooperation, the Confederation of Funds, PLATFORMA, Cooperation Agencies, the European Conference of Support and Solidarity with the Saharawi People – EUCOCO, …).
• To promote channels and initiatives that favour the participation and plurality of Euskal Fondoa partner entities
• To study and apply guidelines to increase the involvement of partner entities, to harmonize deadlines and requirements according to the needs of the project cycle, to reduce late payment in project contributions, …
• To respect and mutualise responsibility for the various affinities of the associated entities in relation to the destination of cooperation projects.

Discover the General Assembly in video.