DG SCIC’s services behind the scenes
On 16 March 2023, President von der Leyen and the Swedish Council Presidency hosted the International Donor's Conference to raise funds in support of the people impacted by the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria.
DG SCIC played multiple roles to support the event's successful organisation. Together with high-quality interpretation, it also provided professional support for conference organisation. Experienced conference managers handled all aspects required for an event that brought together more than a hundred high-level delegations and a high number of journalists.
In this conference, DG SCIC managed to make the impossible, possible. The conference was officially announced 9 days before it actually took place, and despite the numerous difficulties, DG SCIC delivered in 10 days what normally takes 6 months.
Its registration team took care of registering and printing badges for around 500 participants and setting up an online pledging page for donations, while a team of conference room operators dealt with all technicalities related to audio in 8 languages, as well as projection, webstreaming and the remote connection of participants pledging live from around the world.
Coordination proved to be key in an event of such complexity. On the interpretation and technical side, the challenge was to handle a request for a politically, highly visible event on top of the usual workload. On the conference and registration management side it also meant SCIC, and more in particular its Conference Services unit, had to deliver in record time! To do so, they could build on their previous experience with similar pledging conferences on COVID-19, Ukraine or Syria, for instance.
As put by Ms Elisabetta Degiampietro, Head of the Conference Services unit: “Experience, preparation, anticipation, coordination, and good communication were the secrets behind the success and of course, keeping calm when the adrenaline ran high and being prepared to work long days and weekends. When at the end of the day you hear the amount pledged and realise the solidarity shown by all the delegations, the stress and tiredness of the last days suddenly disappear. And you feel proud to work with such professionals who enable the Commission to set up and run an event of such magnitude in no time.”
The pledging session raised €7 billion.
For more information, have a look at the press release .