The Fifth Global Meeting of the Global Alliance of NGOS for road safety kicked off in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 3rd April 2017. As part of the Alliance’s continued empowerment efforts, a number of pre-meeting workshops were organized to give members unique insights into a range of road safety topics. One session that we participated in focused on how NGOs can engage with multi-lateral banks, to obtain support and buy in and partner with these financial institutions for development and social change in road safety.
The Global Alliance of NGOs for Road safety has more than 180 member NGOs, representing 90 countries, 25 of which are low-income countries or lower-middle-income countries. Many of these countries receive loans from Multilateral Banks to improve infrastructure. The session explored what multilateral banks fund how NGOs can contribute to the multilateral banks work and vice versa.
Panelists at the Multi-Lateral Bank Pre-Meeting Workshop
Focus themes included:
- What is the role of multilateral banks in road safety?
- What do Multilateral banks fund and how are the channelled?
- How can NGOs best support the work funded by multilateral banks?
- What advice do multilateral banks have to give NGOs?
Speakers included:
- Marc Shotten, Global Road Safety Facility, World Bank
- Holly Kranbec, World Bank, Asia division
- Lee Lambert, Asia Development Bank
- Betty Omoro, Safe Drivers, Kenya
- Bright Oywaya, Asirt-Kenya
- Manpreet Darroch, YOURS
A full house of participants in the session.
Concrete examples of projects funded by the Asian Development Bank and World Bank Asia Division were projects with evidence based approaches, scalability and sustainability.
Marc Shotten of the Global Road Safety Facility at the World Bank noted that, “NGOs that speak in terms of the global sustainable development agenda are more likely to be successful in working with multi-lateral banks”.
He also noted that, “Often multi-lateral banks seem impenetrable but they do offer millions in development assistance with NGOs helping to design and deliver key programmes…the key is to be persistent and keep knocking the door”.
Lee Lambert from the Asian Development gave key examples of how they are specifically working with young people in several countries. To mainstream youth involvement in ADB operations, ADB Youth for Asia connects with various ADB departments to include youth participation in the different stages of project development. ADB Youth for Asia facilitates youth engagement in projects’ planning, design, consultation, and implementation.
Manpreet Darroch, Communications Officer at YOURS talks about the Belize Partnership with the Caribbean Devleopment Bank
As part of the example showcase of successful NGO partnership with multi-lateral banks, our Communications Officer, Manpreet Darroch presented on our successful partnership with the Caribbean Development Bank. The presentation focused on how YOURS, as a NGO specialized in workshop education with youth formed part of the ‘educational element’ of a wider infrastructure program in Belize.
Read Manpreet’s presentation here.
The event has been followed through social media with the hashtag #GlobalMeeting17.