I hope that you will enjoy the first edition of the ACT Interactive Online Newsletter - ACTION. Our hope is that through this newsletter, Cypriots will learn about the work of the UNDP initiative, Action for Cooperation and Trust (ACT), which was launched in October 2005. We want this newsletter to become an online forum for debate and exchange of ideas of the initiatives taken under the auspices of the ACT project. To this end we welcome your comments and feedback on the stories and items published here and invite our project partners to submit their articles and experiences of working for co-operation and trust between the two main communities on the island. ACTION can become a place where we are able to showcase projects designed and implemented by Cypriots, and which represent local solutions to local problems. It also represents a practical forum for our project partners to share experiences and begin to network across the island, and through this create opportunities for knowledge exchange, improved understanding and innovation.  

What is ACT?
ACT continues the work of the Bi-communal Development Programme (BDP), which completed seven years of operations in the autumn of last year. Both the BDP and ACT have the common goal of helping to create the conditions for a viable settlement to the Cyprus Problem.  ACT, however, was developed on the basis of the many lessons we have learned during the seven year history of the BDP.  Here are just some of those lessons:

1. It is important to develop strategic frameworks that support activities as sustained initiatives rather than discreet events or projects and to build long-term collaborative institutional relationships between the two communities. Having a strategy in place should not eliminate our flexibility to respond to unexpected opportunities. On the contrary, a clear strategy should provide for opportunities to actively seek out and encourage good programmes rather than just to rely on receipt of grant proposals.

2. It is more important than ever to reach out and actively engage institutions that have not previously participated in the promotion and support of inter-communal cooperation. This should happen by pursuing social, technical and educational efforts of common interest. In these cases, sustained cooperation across the different communities in Cyprus may not need to be the primary motivating factor for participants but rather a secondary motivation or a by-product of common activity. However, our primary goal is always to encourage initiatives which will positively deepen the relationship between the two communities.

3. It is better to support a few activities well rather than a lot of activities with average outcomes.

4. Finally, our partners expect and deserve a high degree of transparency with respect to our plans, our funding decisions and our results.  They should have a say in the setting of our priorities.  They want to feel part of a wider network of organisations working towards a common goal.  And they want to be appreciated.

This e-newsletter is, in particular, a direct response to these last lessons learned.  It seeks to serve as a vehicle for communicating to the broader community the project's goals, activities and results.  It also represents one of the many ways that we hope that the achievements of our partners can be recognised and appreciated in the coming years. By highlighting these achievements, we hope to promote opportunities for networking and a sense of community amongst our partners.  And, finally, the e-newsletter is a tool for feedback, so that our partners (and critics) can let us know what we are doing well, and not so well.

So I hope that you will read on and let us know what you think about the ACT Project and how together we can take action to build cooperation and trust for a brighter future for all Cypriots.

Andrew Russell, Programme Manager, UNDP-ACT