Int’l organizations, NGOs and private sector meet in Istanbul

ISTANBUL- Anadolu Agency

International organizations, NGOs and the private sector have major roles in achieving development goals, a manager of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said in a meeting in Istanbul on Sept. 1.       

All those partners have to work together for bringing solutions to development challenges, Gerd Trogemann, the manager of UNDP's Istanbul Regional Hub, stressed during the hub's meeting against poverty.     

Every year, large amounts of money were provided to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) but this is not about money, he underlined.     

"SDGs require a combination of the power of all levels of community, NGOs and the private sectors," he added.     

The complexity of today's development challenges cannot be tackled by individual organizations, individual projects and traditional development finance alone, Trogemann said.     

"To reach the SDGs, the global development community has to work together in a different way, go much deeper and reach much wider than we have done before," he noted.     

The partners should go beyond organizational borders and "build networks and platforms of partnerships, which are designed to solve complex and systemic development challenges" as each partner has different levels of reach, approaches and solutions, Trogemann added.     

Khemais El Gazzah, a senior advisor from Islamic Solidarity Fund for Development (ISFD), said the program targets to create more jobs and improve education in the member countries.     

"We are ambitious to reduce poverty, this cannot be done alone by the IsDB [Islamic Development Bank], ISFD or UNDP, we should work together," he underlined.     

Fighting poverty is not a one-man or one-institution job, people have to cooperate for achieving this, he added.     

"The IsDB started to work with NGOs 8 years ago, and now we are at the second stage to become more efficient," El Gazzah noted.     

He highlighted that the idea was to encourage and promote participation of NGOs in tackling development problems.     

One of the biggest challenges for NGOs is access to funding and the program's role here is to improve the funding opportunities, he added.     

The program's objective is empowering the NGOs to help them create opportunities for hard-to-reach communities through refugee education, job creation, and resilience building, said Ahmed Berthe, the lead of the NGO and Civil Society Engagement of the IsDB Human Development Division.     

The most important step is mapping civil societies in all 57 member countries, he added.     

15,000 refugees and orphans will have access to basic education, said Berthe.     

The two-day meeting, which began on Monday, is organized by the IsDB, ISFD and the UNDP.     

It is a preparatory for the "ISFD NGOs Empowerment for Poverty Reduction Program" to be launched on Sept. 27 on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.     

Several managers from organizer institutions are giving speeches on many issues such as saving children, poverty in Africa, socio-economic issues, Islamic and alternative finance, innovation and blockchain opportunities and partnership with the private sector.