Partners share their plans and expectations for the EYD2015

Today the European Year for Development (EYD) is officially launching in Riga, Latvia to coincide with the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. To mark the launch, we caught up with Member States and partners to see what they have planned for the coming year and what they hope to achieve. 

“We’re really happy that the opening [of the EYD] is in Riga. Which is also symbolic as our NGOs were the ones who wanted this year to happen and were the seed for this to grow,” said Madara Siliņa, Senior Desk Officer for the Development Cooperation Policy Division at the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The opening will focus on post-2015, on the role the EYD can have in fostering these discussions among ourselves, and evaluating how we have done the MDGs.”

The International Cooperation and Development Directorate of the European Commission (DEVCO) is using the EYD as an opportunity to create momentum on development issues and to involve as many stakeholders as possible in informing and engaging with citizens. 2015 is a great time to do this. As well as the EYD, 2015 will also see the post-2015 development agenda defined, mark 20 years since the Beijing Process for women’s empowerment and close with climate negotiations taking place in Paris.

“We’ve got so much happening around 2015 and I think the European Year for Development is a great opportunity to tell the story of the progress that we’ve been making over the last 15 years,” said Tom Baker, Head of Campaigns and Engagement at Bond in the UK. “We know that lots of people in the UK they’re sceptical about whether we’ve made any progress towards the MDGs, whether we’ve managed to do anything about halving global poverty over the last years.”

Activities are planned both at the EU level and also in the Member States. In Latvia, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is going for a decentralised approach to working with NGOs. In turn, the NGOs are working with the public to show them how they can improve the world around them with small changes to their food and consumption patterns. 

DEVCO is also working with civil society, UN organisations and the private sector to mark the EYD. 

In the following video, some of these partners share their hopes and expectations for the EYD.

As social media has become a worldwide phenomenon national boundaries have blurred. For Mr Baker, this provides the ideal opportunity for “taking the best that we’re seeing across the whole of the European Year for Development and making sure we’re sharing that and re-tweeting that and passing that out through different networks. So we can do the storytelling that’s at the heart of the European Year for Development.”

In this group, you can also:

• Learn about the National Work Programmes
• Find out more about the opening ceremony, including how to follow the live stream.

You can also visit the EYD website or follow the EYD on Twitter: @EYD2015 or #EYD2015