The cornerstone of unity

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THE SERVICE CENTRE FOR
DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION
The Service Centre for Development Cooperation, KEPA for short, was founded in spring 1985 as an umbrella for 
Finnish development non-governmental organisations (DNGOs). KEPA was born of two perceived needs: one was 
to breathe new life into the Finnish development corps following another very brief attempt at the end of the 60s. 
The other was the perception that the NGOs should take advantage of the broadly-based cooperation and positive 
experiences generated by the percentage movement and create more permanent and systematic structures for 
cooperation. 
The Percentage Movement idea gradually took shape in late 1979 and the concept was simple 
– everyone in 
Finland was invited to pay 1% or more of their gross income to support development cooperation projects or 
other solidarity work in the South which was undertaken or sponsored by Finnish NGOs. The movement 
demanded that Finnish official ODA must reach 0,7 % of GDP by 1985 and it should be designed to benefit the 
poorest and most underprivileged people. The movement grew during the first half of the 1980s from a small 
project of local action groups to a huge campaign engaging tens of small and big Finnish NGOs. At best more 
than 100 000 Finns were reguarly contributing to the campaign. The Percentage Movement reached its main 
political goal when Finnish ODA reached 0,7 % by 1991. However, the achievement proved temporary because 
after that, following several budget cuts, Finnish ODA has fallen below the target. 
Development corps changed into a new form of development work in nearly all the industrialized countries. 
Educated youths with perhaps hardly any work experience were sent with little money to participate in grass roots 
level tasks in developing countries. Gradually this changed to become increasingly demanding and professional 
salaried work. 
As the development cooperation implemented by NGOs grew, it was decided that the time was right to restart 
the Finnish development corps’ activities. There was one condition, however: its activities could be completely 
financed by public development co-operation funds, but the responsibility for the activities would be transferred 
to the Finnish NGOs themselves. 
In 1982 an advisory board for NGO development cooperation (KaKeNe) was founded to coordinate not only 
the campaign but also lobbying on issues related to development cooperation. This body set up a work group led 
by Marja-Liisa Swantz, who was at that time the director of the Institute for Development Studies, to look at 
different ways of creating a permanent DNGO cooperation forum. In 1983 and 1984 the government appointed a 
committee to analyse the development corps’ activities. The credit for the initial idea of KEPA goes to Marja-Liisa 
Swantz, who produced a memorandum for the KaKeNe working group which detailed the need for and proposed 
functions of a “Development Service Centre”. The idea was that this centre’s remit would include producing 
information and training services for NGOs, coordinating joint campaigns and serving as an “alternative 
consulting agency”. The development corps committee decided to propose that the Service Centre for 
Development Cooperation take on an administrative role. 

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The rest is history, as they say. KEPA’s founding meeting was held on 5 March 1985. Government and NGO 
representatives decided to “kill two birds with one stone” and found KEPA, which was charged with two principal 
tasks: to provide services and organise campaigns for Finnish 
DNGOs, and manage Finland’s development 
corps. 
This decision was typically Finnish in its aim to balance the needs and goals of the government and civil 
society in a way that would be “satisfactory to both parties”. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs needed a 
representable organisation which would take responsibility for managing the development corps. The DNGOs 
had a different perspective, however: they thought taking responsibility for the development corps would allow 
them to start providing services and organising campaigns (thus receiving more public funding). In practice, the 
development corps became KEPA’s main function while other activities were assigned to the back burner due to 
lack of funding. KEPA’s actions were based on this concept for the first ten years of its existence. In the second 
half of the 1990s KEPA’s activities were evaluated and the scope of its tasks was redefined – once again in 
cooperation with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and DNGOs. The development corps became a separate activity 
and integrated into the new extensive programme focusing on the South, while programmes on information, 
services and development policy were developed into a versatile entity with much stronger resources than 
before. 
KEPA is unique in the field of European development cooperation. The broad spectrum of the Finnish NGOs 
are ready to co-operate without prejudice or regard for the perceived divisions between organisations and at the 
same time engage in pragmatic co-operation with both government authorities and civil society. 
In the mid-eighties KEPA began to nurture an offshoot which has stood the test of time: eve
nts called “Market 
of Opportunities”. This is a bazaar-like marketplace event which has spread further across the country every 
year, and it makes development activitiesand NGOs better known to the general public. In Helsinki it is called 
World in a Village and has become a big annual multicultural event every spring which attracts tens of thousands 
of people to take part. KEPA still functions as the main co-ordinator of both the bazaar and the village events. 
Folke Sundman 
– Executive director of KEPA 1986–2003,
special adviser to Foreign minister 2003
–2007, senior researcher
and climate change negotiator at the Foreign Ministry 2008- 2016