The Crop­per Foun­da­tion (TCF) is join­ing with oth­er glob­al en­ti­ties in cel­e­brat­ing World NGO Day to­day.

Since 2014, Feb­ru­ary 27 has marked the in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion of the vi­tal ser­vices pro­vid­ed by di­verse col­lec­tives of peo­ple across the globe to­wards im­prov­ing hu­man life and pro­tect­ing the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment.

Com­mon­ly re­ferred to or un­der­stood as non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs), en­ti­ties cre­at­ed by peo­ple mo­ti­vat­ed by and unit­ed around spe­cif­ic pur­pos­es or caus­es can take var­i­ous forms and, more broad­ly, make up what is known as “civ­il so­ci­ety.”

Civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions (CSOs) com­prise NGOs, com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions (CBOs), faith-based ogan­i­sa­tions (FBOs), vil­lage coun­cils, aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions and oth­er var­ied, in­for­mal groups.

In a re­lease, the foun­da­tion said the cur­rent glob­al cli­mate of in­creas­ing in­equal­i­ty and a grow­ing trend of right-wing pol­i­tics, com­pound­ed by ex­is­ten­tial threats of cli­mate change im­pacts, there is a greater de­mand on civ­il so­ci­ety lead­ers to bol­ster civic en­gage­ment and par­tic­i­pa­tion.

It said as the world cel­e­brates World NGO Day to­day, the TCF, through its dig­i­tal civ­il so­ci­ety plat­form CSO Go (cso­go.tt), is prepar­ing to host its fourth an­nu­al vir­tu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion be­lat­ed­ly on March 10 and 11 at 9 am-12 pm on both days.

The TCF said this an­nu­al gath­er­ing of civ­il so­ci­ety ac­tors at­tracts par­tic­i­pa­tion across the spec­trum of or­gan­i­sa­tions work­ing lo­cal­ly (and some re­gion­al­ly), from youth and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions to cul­tur­al, en­vi­ron­men­tal and hu­man rights-fo­cused en­ti­ties.

It not­ed that the 2025 edi­tion will see the ex­pan­sion of the ini­tia­tive’s core ob­jec­tives of sol­i­dar­i­ty build­ing and knowl­edge shar­ing to in­clude mo­bil­is­ing to­wards the cre­ation of a com­mon civ­il so­ci­ety agen­da ahead of the forth­com­ing T&T gen­er­al elec­tions.

While the of­fi­cial in­ter­na­tion­al theme “Em­pow­er­ing Grass­roots Move­ments for a Sus­tain­able Fu­ture” aligns with the TCF’s on­go­ing mis­sion to strength­en the civ­il so­ci­ety sec­tor through col­lab­o­ra­tion and ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, the 24-year-old non-prof­it has cho­sen to spot­light the pro­tec­tion of civic space with its theme S.O.S! Se­cur­ing Our Space: Unit­ing for Civic Re­silience.

TCF CEO Cherisse Braith­waite-Joseph said, “As ac­tive part­ners in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, we see a clear role for CSOs in in­form­ing na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions on gov­er­nance and the breadth of so­cial and de­vel­op­ment jus­tice is­sues.”

She added, “What is al­so clear is that the work of en­hanc­ing our sec­tor’s ac­count­abil­i­ty and re­silience, to which we re­main stead­fast­ly com­mit­ted, is deeply con­nect­ed to how we re­spond to evolv­ing po­lit­i­cal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic dy­nam­ics.”

The two-day vir­tu­al event will kick off on March 10 with the keynote pre­sen­ta­tion from Amil­car Sanatan, Caribbean artist, ed­u­ca­tor and ac­tivist, and will fea­ture in­ter­ac­tive work­shops and pan­el dis­cus­sions. For more in­for­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter for this 2025 World NGO Day com­mem­o­ra­tion, vis­it cso­go.tt/ngo­day2025/