Every institution faces two strategic challenges: to provide quality services to citizens and to enable territorial development based on its scope of intervention.
The most common problems of the public entities are:
Structural Budgetary Limitations.
Weak collaboration dynamics with other actors in society.
Lack of territorial and international strategic partners.
Lack of technical capabilities.
Lack of a strategic and operational plan aimed at alleviating deficiencies and developing the potential of the public institution.
In order to meet the above-mentioned needs, CONEXX-EU offers a process of revitalising decentralised cooperation.
In practice, this process has the following phases:
1. Strategic territorial analysis and institutional strategic plan. The weaknesses and strengths of the institution are brought to light, territorial opportunities and threats are identified, political priorities are established and actions are ordered in a Strategic Plan and an Operational Plan.
2. Training in externally funded international cooperation projects. We train public technicians in international financing processes to make the institution and its projects fundable.
3. Agenda of meetings with international strategic partners. We identify good international practices linked to their priorities and reach strategic alliances with different actors that reinforce the institution’s projects.
4. Systematization of the project management units. We establish the relevant actions to professionalise the unit responsible for managing international cooperation projects.
5. Presentation, execution and monitoring of decentralised multi-actor cooperation projects. We accompany the process of presenting the projects of the institution to international financiers.
A few examples are:
In 2019 a collaboration agreement was initiated with different municipalities in Mexico, such as the Municipality of Zautla, creating action plans to internationalize the municipalities and participate in international cooperation projects.
In 2018 strategic alliances were established between municipalities in the Basque Country and Latin America, promoting joint projects to transfer knowledge and experiences in municipality practices and inclusive local economic development.
In 2016, a process of dynamisation was carried out with municipalities from El Salvador and Guatemala. During a visit to Brussels, they were trained on European Union financing instruments. In a second phase they visited European municipalities with the same priorities, got to know successful projects and closed collaboration agreements with future partners. As a result, projects were presented to the European Commission with Latin American and European partners (municipalities, NGOs and universities).
