IICD joins Partos
Oct 19 2004, Governance
Partos is the umbrella association for Dutch NGOs in the international development cooperation sector. Its objectives include influencing policy, gaining and distributing information and knowledge, and consolidating a broad range of support among the Dutch public arena. Many member organisations work directly in developing countries, often in cooperation with partner organisations. Other members focus instead, or additionally, on the Netherlands.
How Partos came into existence
The non-governmental field of development cooperation in the Netherlands is made up of numerous different organisations. Though many collaboration efforts already exist, cooperation needs to be further improved and strengthened.
An umbrella association is ideally placed to carry out this task and to help the different parties concerned get to know each other and cooperate more effectively. Partos seeks to coordinate efforts to adopt sector- wide positions on key-issues, will stimulate the shaping of a common vision and will contribute to improve the quality and professionalism of the sector as a whole.
ICCO’s Director Jack van Ham took the initiative of calling for the creation of an umbrella association in 2003. Since then, more than 80 other organisations have been involved. A steering committee was set up to lead the exploratory phase, make suggestions as to the future shape of the association and prepare for the founding of Partos.
Partos was launched on 6 October 2004.