Ms. Susanne Schraa and Dr. Claudia Warning visited CANGO

On Aug. 25^th, 2009, Ms. Susanne Schraa, Head of Division of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and Dr. Claudia Warning, Director International Programmes of EED visited CANGO. Nine staff members from different departments of CANGO attended the meeting.

At the beginning Mr. Huang Haoming, Executive Director of CANGO gave a brief introduction to the  present development of CANGO as well as the situation of  Chinese NGOs as a whole.  After that, Ms. Wang Yena, training assistant of the CANGO training department gave a presentation on VTC program and the project progress. VTC program is a three-year program (from 2007 to 2010), which is funded by EED. Three key activities during this program were discussed in detail, including NGO development training; regional workshops and network building. Project objectives, project design, training results and project evaluation both internal and external were all discussed. According to the feedback, most of the participants said that such trainings were quite necessary for NGO development and should be continued, Mrs. Claudia Warning very much appreciated the project progress. During presentation, she was quite interested in the external environment of Chinese NGOs, such as the present legal framework and its changes and the relationship between NGOs and local government. Mr. Huang Haoming responded to her questions in detail.

As the project assistant for Women Entrepreneurship Project in Xinjiang province, Zhou Shuwen introduced this project in terms of project background, activities and outcomes, and project challenges. Mrs. Claudia Warning and Mrs. Susanne Schraa first expressed their satisfaction with project results and outputs. Besides, Mrs. Claudia Warning proposed that project trainees be accompanied by an expert’s face-to-face and one-on-one assistance aiming at providing follow-up service, because problems can come up later according to the EED's experience. She said that it was important to find out what the beneficiaries were doing after the training, and if it was true that their income was raised after this project. She also proposed that another survey is necessary to be conducted to learn what kind of support the trainees needed, and expressed her opinion that the EED should give support to a new project to continue the impact of this project. Accordingly, Zhao Daxing, Deputy Executive Director of CANGO introduced a currently planned project aiming at continuing the positive project effects. Discussion on the new project is proceeding with project stakeholders. Challenges that CANGO have met in the previous project period, both the settled ones and unsettled ones are going to be taken into consideration for an even more efficient project output.

Zheng Hong, coordinator from public relation department introduced the work of two Germany volunteers at CANGO. They currently assist CANGO's staff revising English documents and articles for CANGO's websites. In the following one year, they will be arranged to accept Chinese language courses and to work in local NGOs as volunteers. Mrs. Claudia Warning agreed on this plan.

Additionally, Zhao Daxing introduced another two planned projects, one was “Agricultural skills training for women” in Hami region, Xinjiang province, and the other one was the second phase of Guangxi water drinking project. Mrs. Claudia suggested that more detailed preparation should be done to guarantee that project goals were achieved, such as conducting another survey to learn what support the trainees needed.