Community members in decision making at the local level

On April 7^th -8^th the “CMB” Training Center facilitated a training for the Criuleni Youth Center “UNIT”. The training was funded by the U.S. Embassy democracy small grants program.  The project will support 14 community initiatives by giving them the tools they need to identify and solve problems within their communities.  The 14 communities were represented by both a youth council representative and an employee within the mayor’s office.

The goal of this training was to help each community identify short-term solvable problems within the community and to identify different tools and resources they could use to solve the problems.

After this first training each community is responsible for forming an initiative group within their community, identify problems as a collective , decide which one is most urgent and can be solved within a year time, and then come up with at least two solutions to the problem.

In June, the youth council member and mayor’s office personnel will come back to the Cruleni Youth Center for a second training based on presentation skills and how to facilitate a local debate based on the problem and the solutions the initiative group identified.  The training was a great success, the participants had a strong passion for improving their communities and they learned how to put their ideas into action.