The European Union Delegation to Armenia and the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) have signed a contract on a 2 million euro grant that marks the beginning of a three-year project aimed at facilitating development of civil society sector in Armenia, AGBU said in a statement.

AGBU Armenia is actively undertaking a new strategic direction to engage more closely with civil society in the country and through this grant will take its first steps.

The Civil Society Facilitation project will be implemented by AGBU Armenia together with the Eurasia Partnership Foundation (EPF). The project will build the capacity of local CSOs and harness their networks. A special focus will be put on establishing direct ties between experts from Diaspora and local CSOs and facilitating skills and knowledge exchange as well as more active involvement of Diaspora in a day-to-day life of the Armenian civil society.

The project will complement the currently run EU-funded capacity building project which focuses on internal and external capacity building of around 100 CSOs in Armenia (STRONG Civil Society Organisations for Stronger Armenia) and other ongoing actions supported by the European Union (e.g. Community Development through Social Entrepreneurship - CODE-SE project- Social Response to Labour Migration in Armenia (Together4Armenia.am)). The action is completely in line with the priorities identified in the EU Country Roadmap for Engagement with Civil Society (2014-2017) and Annual Action Programme 2015 in favour of the Republic of Armenia.