Country Support Progr.

National Dialogues

The dialogues informs the countries about global environmental issues and GEF policies and procedures; they also support countries to take stock of GEF-financed activities and results of GEF country portfolio, further define priorities for funding and develop national strategies and plans, strengthen national GEF coordination processes and mechanisms and inter-sectoral coordination, enhance inter-agency collaboration and partnerships and promote the integration of the GEF in national environmental and sustainable development plans and processes.

The dialogues are organized at the request of the GEF Operational Focal Points and involve a diversity of government ministries and agencies, NGOs, communities, academic and research institutions, the private sector, as well as partners and donors in the country.

Expanded Constituency Workshops (ECW)

These workshops aim at keeping the GEF national focal points, convention focal points and other key stakeholders, including civil society, abreast of GEF strategies, policies and procedures and to encourage coordination. The events are an opportunity for focal points to meet with their counterparts from other countries in the region and other GEF partners to discuss and review policies and procedures and to share lessons and experiences from development and implementation of GEF projects and their integration within national policy frameworks.

Constituency Meetings

These meetings are organized at the request of the Council Member and is open only to the focal points of the Constituency’s member countries.

The purpose of the Constituency Meetings is to enable the Council Members of recipient countries to meet with their constituency partners in order to discuss matters and to define constituency positions for Council meetings.

These meetings also provide an opportunity to share information and obtain feedback on issues on the Council’s agenda, to review country and constituency coordination issues, to enhance communication and outreach efforts, to decide upon constituency governance issues, such as the order in which countries will assume Council Member and Alternate seats (rotation agreements), and discuss implementation of GEF projects and share lessons learned.

National Portfolio Formulation Exercise (NPFE)

Voluntary NPFEs are meant to be tools to help interested recipient countries to establish or to strengthen national processes and mechanisms to facilitate GEF programming. NPFEs are country executed activities. The choice of whether a country executes a voluntary NPFE is solely at the discretion of the country government and they are not a pre-requisite for obtaining GEF grants.

Familiarization Seminars

The seminars are currently aimed at new GEF Agency personnel and a handful of new operational focal points.

GEF Familiarization Seminar are held once a year in Washington, D.C, to train new country focal points and GEF Agency officers on GEF strategies, policies and procedures.