From October 25 to October 27 three TANDEM seminars and trainings took place in Belarus. On October 25 ALDA, the Lev Sapieha Foundation, the Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments and Gulbene Municipality visited Golshany municipality to see the museum on the Struve Geodetic Arc that has been created as part of the partnership project “Arc: Uniting people and cultures” that was funded by TANDEM. The guests were also introduced to the virtual museum on the Arc, which can be visited here.
On October 26, a seminar on Forms of citizen participation in the decision-making process at the local level was organised in Braslav. At the seminar Mrs. Mudite Priede, Secretary General of the Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments (LALRG) told about citizen participation in Latvia and the work of LALRG in representing the Latvian municipalities at the national level and in negotiations with the Latvian government. Mrs. Guna Švika and Mr. Alvils Pētersons from Gulbene municipality told about the work Gulbene municipality conducts to involve citizens in the work of the municipalities. The participations also learned about the possibilities for citizen participation in Belarus, such as for instance local referenda and territorial self-government bodies. However, despite the legal provisions for these forms of participation the possibilities are very rarely used. The seminar was part of the European Local Democracy week. Representatives from the Regional council in Vitebsk oblast took part in the seminar together with the project managers of projects receiving grants under TANDEM.
On October 27, a training was organised on the topic “From project management to organisational development” to support the subgranted projects in their strategic planning to turn their projects and initiatives into more sustainable structures that could become viable in the long term.
The TANDEM project is supported by the European Union’s Non-State Actors and Local Authorities in Development programme and will be implemented by ALDA together with the Lev Sapieha Foundation and the Belarusian Organisation for Working Women and will last until first half of 2013. There is more information about the project and the subgranted projects here.