The participants of the NIZHNA project learned how to do this during a webinar on effective interaction with local authorities.
Coach Nadezhda Timoshenko held online trainings for the first cohort of project participants. During the webinars, the following topics were jointly explored:
- building effective interaction with local authorities, advocacy of the interests of IDPs;
- authority of local authorities to support small businesses, how local authorities can support business projects: subsidies, grants, consultations;
- how to use existing business support programs for internally displaced persons;
- the structure of power in Ukraine;
- establishing partnerships and secrets of effective communication with the authorities in order to achieve their goals;
- concepts of advocacy and social responsibility;
- participation of non-governmental organizations in the development of local government policies and programs.
Also, during the exercises and exchange of experience, the coach and the participants jointly analyzed typical errors of communication with officials: misunderstanding of the authority of a particular official, unclear wording of the problem, lack of a clear proposal for solving the issue, excessive emotionality, expectation of a quick result, etc.
Feedback on the webinar from the project participants read on.
Project NIZHNA (Women's Unbreakable Initiative — Persistently and Actively) is being implemented by NGO “Light of Hope” with technical support from UN Women in Ukraine and with the funding of the UN Women's Fund for Peace and Humanitarian Aid (WPHF), a flexible and operational financing instrument supporting quality measures for capacity building local women in conflict prevention, crisis and emergency response and use of key peace-building opportunities.
This publication has been prepared with the financial support of the United Nations Women's Peace and Humanitarian Aid Foundation (WPHF), but this does not mean that the views and content expressed therein are officially endorsed or recognized by the United Nations.
