About us
ETC International Group
ETC International Group is a network of professional organisations with offices in six countries. For 30 years ETC has been involved in the initiation, implementation and management of a wide range of development programmes, projects and consultancy. Knowledge management and networking for innovative development activities aimed at poverty alleviation and sustainable development are at the core of ETC’s activities.
Though a non-profit organisation with a value and idea-driven approach, ETC conducts its operations along businesslike lines.
As ETC is working with hundreds of partners in 75 countries on all continents the emphasis on either sustainable development, poverty reduction or rehabilitation, differs in different regions. To illustrate this diversity: in India we support farmers to find an alternative in organic cotton growth, in Kenia we advice health management at district level and in The Netherlands we support rural renewal by promoting innovation and local participation.
ETC has a broad range of fields of expertise, including health, endogenous development, energy and gender, energy and poverty, climate change, natural resource management, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity, urban agriculture and food security, rural development.
In these fields of expertise, ETC has a range of approaches or ‘products & services’: management of global resource centres, incubation of global networks, formulating programmes and policy, evaluation of organisations, networks and policies, research type of studies, training and capacity building, contributing to policy dialogue and institutional change.
ETC is the host organisation of quite a few national and global programmes, which are extensive network organisations in most cases with partners in several continents. Some of these networks are initiated by ETC. In the past, ETC has been incubator of ILEIA (Information Centre for Low External input Agriculture) and of AME Foundation (promoting ecological agriculture in India).
For more information on fields of expertise and services we refer to the individual web-sites of ETC offices, units and programmes.
The approach of ETC can be best characterised by:
- Needs, knowledge and responsibility of locally livelihoods are a focal point. We seek to help people so that they might gain better access to the opportunities they need to improve their livelihoods and govern their own lives.
- Involvement of all relevant stakeholders in order to achieve long term solutions. This implies that participatory methodologies and partnerships are elementary.
- Innovation: ETC has a reputation of pioneering and developing new concepts and innovative approaches.
- Facilitators of change: Development goals require clear objectives and an intervention oriented approach. ETC supports processes of change which are regarded as learning processes with all stakeholders concerned.