Civil Society Perspective

Family Organisations at the Local, National, European and Global Level – Three Case Studies

This report on Family Organisations at the Local, National, European and Global Level has been prepared by Linden Farrer (COFACE), Lorenza Rebuzzini (FDAF),  Liverani Aurora (FDAF), Anne-Claire de Liedekerke (MMM), Jill Donnelly (MMM) & Marie-Liesse Mandula (MMM).

Keywords: civil society organisations, family organisations, family associations, case studies, lobbying, representation.

The brief of this report is to profile the activities and political dimensions of family associations so that the range of stakeholder representatives can be properly considered in the work of FAMILYPLATFORM.

To that end, this report consists of three case studies of civil society organisations involved in FAMILYPLATFORM: Forum Delle Associazioni Familiari (based in Rome and operating at a local and national level in Italy), Confederation of Family Organisations in the European Union (based in Brussels and operating at a European Union level), and Mouvement Mondial des Mères (based in Paris and operating at a global level).

The three case studies should not be considered a holistic overview or survey of the field of family or social organisations. Instead, they represent a snapshot of activity in the field of family organisations at the moment, describing how the organisations support their members, interact with and attempt to influence political institutions, negotiate the tightrope of receiving public funding while at the same time adopting (sometimes) critical positions on those same public institutions’ policies, come to decisions in a democratic manner, and what some of the challenges and difficulties they face are.

Although the aim has been to present the organisations ‘dispassionately’, the report has been written by authors from the organisations in question; it can do no harm at all that some of the conviction and enthusiasm of these authors shines through in this finished text.