Fighting Poverty, Creating Opportunities: EPHA attends the European Foundation Centre’s Annual Conference

On 14-16 May 2009, EPHA attended the EFC’s annual conference, held in Rome. The event brought together an important number of foundations from Europe and the United States, as well as a number of civil society organisations (CSOs), with a view to examine poverty in its broadest sense. The event was aimed at considering the relationship and impact between poverty and the creation of opportunities through education, training, empowerment and the building of skills.

EPHA’s representatives attended sessions such as: “Community-based health systems: Human resources and education to combat poverty”, “Innovative ways for foundations to fight poverty in Europe”, “Innovative collaboration strategies between civil society organisations and business”. They took the opportunity to raise a number of issues that are key to the organisation’s work: health inequalities in Europe, the achievement of the health Millennium Development Goals, as well as the need to further support CSOs in their role as citizen’s representatives and advocates for public interests.

The conference provided a good space for foundations to network and exchange experience in relation to existing actions, projects and programmes tackling various aspects of world poverty. EPHA has made an important number of contacts with various foundations, which will hopefully be useful in its work and that of its members.

For more information

European Foundation Centre