On 12-13 November 2021 the next series of training sessions were conducted within the training programme for young women leaders implemented by the Council of Europe* in partnership with Poltava Oblast Council. This training programme is developed based on the Council of Europe toolkit** for local authorities and non-governmental organisations, aimed at enhancing young women’s and girls’ participation in political and public decision-making processes at local level.
These two training days were devoted to development of leadership skills needed for achieving success, as well as to learning the projects’ advocacy basics and key factors to consider for ensuring the efficiency of advocacy process.
The session on 12 November, led by Maria Nasedkina, well-known trainer for leaders and consultant on strategic management in public sector, was focused on key leadership skills and tools. During the training, the participants who are already involved not only in student self-governance, but also in civil participation activities, have gained knowledge about management styles, key functions of leaders, coherent work and communication in the team, received practical advice for successful teams building and functioning, as well as analysed the main leaders' mistakes and ways to avoid them.
Following that, on 13 November, the young leaders had an advocacy basics training led by Oleksiy Kovalenko, national civil participation expert, head of the Civil Society Development Forum, coordinator and leader of “Kyiv Public Platform of NGOs”, advocate of the All-Ukrainian Public Budget, expert on introduction of new tools for e-democracy and improvement the efficiency of existing ones. During the training session, young leaders learnt about the peculiarities of the strategic advocacy process, analysed cases of advocacy campaigns, discovered how to build advocacy activities based on goals and priorities, examined strategic documents on local development, including regional and local development strategies and local budget programs, as well as played online game “UChange”, during which they had an opportunity to work on basic advocacy case, based on the example provided by one of the participants. And that all in interactive form, using digital tools, with inspired teamwork!
The above-mentioned activities took place in the framework of the training programme of the Council of Europe, that is being piloted in Poltava and is aimed to help the participants to train the skills and qualities necessary for further active engagement in local public and political life.
* Piloting of the Toolkit is implemented in cooperation and with the support of the Council of Europe projects «Supporting the transparency, inclusiveness and integrity of electoral practice in Ukraine” and “Strengthening civil participation in democratic decision making in Ukraine”
** The toolkit was developed with the support of the Council of Europe project “Supporting the transparency, inclusiveness and integrity of electoral practice in Ukraine”, implemented within the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine for 2018-2022
