The Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland has informed that they plan to cut the funding of Siemenpuu Foundation for year 2016 by approximately 38 %. This is part of the massive cuts of the development cooperation funds announced by the new government. The cuts will hit hard the Siemenpuu Foundation and its partners in developing countries. Also other bigger Finnish development organisations face similar levels of cuts, and the call for proposals for smaller organisations has been cancelled altogether.
For the Siemenpuu Foundation the planned cut would mean closing the funding window for new applications, as well as cuts in the personnel. Planned new initiatives and calls for applications would need to be postponed or cancelled. We will try to minimize the adverse impacts of the cuts on the partners’ activities and on the beneficiaries.
This is a hard blow to the efforts aimed strengthening the civil society in developing countries working on environment, democracy and human rights. In many areas and regions where Siemenpuu works the space of civil society to advocate and work for a more sustainable and equitable future is already shrinking. The drastic decision of the Finnish government will further escalate the worrying tendency.
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The Foundation receives its funding from the public development cooperation funds administered by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. The Foundation’s budget for 2015 is 2.1 million Euros.
Ministry’s news (30.6.2015) on the decision “Changes in CSOs’ development cooperation support from the start of next year”