Peja Training
In early March jim as was asked by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) to assist the local staff in developing a training for their Civic Forum Advocacy program. The Civic Forum is a program where over the past year NDI has been working with NGO's(youth and woman's groups) through out Kosovo building basic organizing skills. Jim will be doing several training's, with the local staff, on developing strategic plans to influence public policy. These plans will hopefully result with the groups working with the central and municipal assemblies (national and regional governments) to pass new laws to address the issues of concern to the citizens. Pictures courtesy of NDI.
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After rehearsing the training with the NDI staff in their offices it was time to take the show on the road. The training in Peja was the third and by now we had gotten the bugs out of the program. Even though we rehearsed we had to improvise and modify the program to the knowledge levels of the participants. Democracy is warmly embraced by everyone but the concepts are so new. After years of communism and dictatorship where individual expression and participation in government were discouraged teaching the concepts of active citizen participation need to start with the basic principals. Next to Jim is Edita, his translator. Her skills, energy and knowledge were invaluable. |
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The group had about 25 energetic youth leaders. Standing is Niti the NDI Program Director for this project. He and the other staff were great when we got hung up on a concept or word. Since we rehearsed they were able to explain it in Albanian directly and we didn't have to play the Albanian to English question then English to Albanian answer most of the time. |
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Ahhh where would be be without the flip chart. We had two of them. One for jim in English and the other Edita did in Albanian though many spoke good English. Since we had several organizations represented we started out in the morning working as a single regional organization to model the process of developing goals or issues as they are called here. There was the brainstorming session of goals, then discussion and prioritization based on resources available to address the issue, then the development of objectives and the work plan. For those that have been to some of jims training's one can see on the flip chart the familiar item to do, who is doing it, when does it need to be done and what resources are needed to successfully accomplish the task. |
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The basic triangle. The foundation is the mission or vision of the organization, then the goals or issues, then objectives followed by the work plan. |
| Violeta the other trainer and photographer. She opened up the session defining what advocacy is, what public policy is and how it can be transformed into a law. |  |
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At the end of the day all the groups reported out and shared their issues, objectives and work plans for their organization. Here jim is getting the translation of the presentations and offering feedback. The groups didn't have complete plans but good outlines were developed. NDI has field staff that live in these communities and their task will be to work with these groups to massage the plans and guide the groups through the implementation phase. |