Piango

For a little over 25 years, the Pacific Islands of Non-Government Organisation (PIANGO) served the Pacific through strengthening and building the capacity of the civil society sector. This is through giving the sector a voice to policy formulation and development and strengthening National Liaison Unit (NLU) or the umbrella organisations in the 23 member countries of the Pacific. PIANGO is the major regional non-governmental organisationwith membership at the National level in this case in the 23 Countries and territories of the Pacific Islands. With its membership network spread across the biggest ocean of the world, this has brought many challenges including the high cost of transporta tion, limited accessibility to communication systems, and the weak interest by in development partners to support civil society work bothat national and regional level, it further demonstrates the lack of understanding of the role and contribution of civil society to extend and make services accessible to the poor and marginalised sector of our society. Given the lack of understanding of the role of Civil Society that has become a 'boom and bust' cycle in development partner's support, PIANGO had experienced a fair shareof the same. The strong PIANGO network of NLUs demonstrated the ownership and family relationships that it has built over the years which have continued to support this network and has kept us afloat. The re-emergence of PIANGO had developed this strategic framework incorporating all the learning from its journey to map out its future direction on the following priority areas: Strenghthening CSO Platform in the Pacific Development Effectiveness Evidence-based Policy Advocacy Pacific Development Leadership The 2013 - 2015 Strategic Plan of PIANGO sets out a dynamic vigorous robust direction of development for Civil Society Sector grounded on understanding the Pacific context.