This purpose of this report (RE-285) is to evaluate whether the Bank is implementing the program to strengthen civil society organizations (CSOs), as indicated by the Board of Directors to the IDB in the document GN-1883-5. OVE chose to review the Bank's relationship with NGOs because NGOs are becoming so numerous in Latin America, and because they often combine the efforts of many community based efforts in order to have a greater impact. The projects chosen for evaluation were from Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador and each one illustrates one or more of the activities outlined by the Board in 1995. This report synthesizes the results of five developed case studies (available on the OVE website).