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Ammon News - The West Asia-North Africa (WANA) Institute and the European Delegation in Jordan collaborated on a two-year training and grant project to help Jordanian civil society organizations use their platforms to address environmental issues. The project's goal was to improve the technical, administrative, and financial capabilities of community-based organizations (CBOs) for long-term outcomes in both the southern and northern parts of the kingdom.

In "Training for Change: Empowering Civil Society to Advocate Policies," training took place over the course of eight months, and then the CBOs were coached and mentored for ten months as they carried out environmental projects intended to address urgent local issues.

Along with two other project partners, the Intermediaries Change Center for Sustainable Development in Ajloun and Al-Khansa for Social Development in Tafileh, the WANA Institute has been overseeing the training and grants project's implementation in various communities throughout Jordan since February 2020. The training helped the CBOs identify, design, and submit grant applications to address urgent environmental problems in their local communities. Topics covered in the training included environmental agreements, local environmental challenges, research, analysis, and policy advocacy.

Moreover, an online map "Tashbeek" was developed and launched, listing a network of Jordanian Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). The overall aim of this platform was to bring together a network of Jordan’s CSOs, making sure all are visually represented on the national CSO landscape. The tool provides a Geographic Information Systems-based map, colour-coding CSOs, and provides a brief account of CSOs’ areas of activity, and a database for Call for Proposals translated to Arabic.

Professor Mashhoor Al-Refai President of PSUT-Princess Sumaya University for Technology, conveyed Her Royal Highness’s remarks today at the closing ceremony: "The replication of such a project to include other community-based organisations, will lead to culmination of the energies and harnessing these efforts to improve the people’s lives in Jordan, because our people are the first and most important wealth in this country. Hence, it is necessary to provide a mechanism for cooperation among these organisations to unify efforts, exchange experiences and disseminate them. We at the Royal Scientific Society aspire for active participation with scientific research institutions with the support of the European Union, to move our country to a knowledge-based economy.

Maria Hadjitheodosiou, Ambassador and Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Jordan, stressed on the crucial role the CSOs and CBOs shall play as development partners in improving governance and local development, fostering accountability and transparency, and reinforcing inclusive policy-making. "Training for Change: Empowering Civil Society to Advocate Policies Project is equally unique as it addresses not only the involvement of CBOs in advocating polices but also highlighting their role in the environmental challenges including water scarcity, climate change, solid waste management and agriculture, and paving the way for more innovative sustainable solutions in these thematic areas."

Majd Al Naber, the project Manager, emphasised the importance of including the CBOs in the sustainable development agenda to ensure enhancing their resilience towards environmental challenges, to be able to turn these challenges into opportunities.