Minority NGOs training seminars in Riga

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 1998 22:56:32 +0300 (EET DST)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: Minority NGOs training seminars in Riga

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]> 

Original sender: Dimitrijs Alehins <[email protected]>

Minority NGOs training seminars in Riga


On 20-21 February, Centre for Social and Educational Research "Baltic
Insight" (Boris Tsilevich and Dimitrijs Alehins) held two-day seminar
"MODERN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND ORGANISATIONAL CAPACITY BUILDING"
for ethnic minority NGOs in Latvia. It was the first training event of
the kind in Latvia with target audience of minority organisations
speaking Russian, yet, representing different ethnic groups in the
country, besides Russians: Ukrainians, Tatars, Poles, Armenians. It
was arranged and held as a series of different focused workshops
pasted together under the conditions of relevance for the minority
NGOs.

The broad understanding of relevance, professional performance of
trainers and use of the Russian language made the event a success. The
seminar included issues of defining minority and its rights (Nils
Muiznieks, Latvian Center for Human Rights and Ethnic Studies),
identifying discrimination on the basis of ethnic belonging (Alexander
Ossipov, "Memorial" Human Rights Center, Moscow), introduction to
Internet and e-mail (Bruno Martuzans, Institute of Mathematics and
Computer Science of the University of Latvia), specificity of the
MINELRES product (Boris Tsilevich) - which was given special attention
as familiarising NGOs with practical aspects of the modern information
technologies is a halfway towards a self-sustainable and professional
NGO community possessing knowledge and tools for producing and
processing information. 

During the seminar, the NGOs received a short and focused introduction
to the magic of organisational capacity building (Inete Ielite and
Dimitrijs Alehins) that, thanks to its participant-centred methods of
training delivery, was leading the participants towards the final
stage of the event - the panel discussion. The panel discussion was a
succesful method of addressing myriads of questions that arose during
the two days of the seminar. The subject of the panel discussion was
very broad like the focus of the entire seminar: "Ethnic Minorities in
the Baltic States: Challenges and Solutions".

State and non-state representatives from Estonia (Vello Pettai,
Larissa and
Alexei Semjonov), Lithuania (Pavel Lavrinets), Latvia (Reinis
Aboltins, Tatiana Liguta and Boris Tsilevich), and from the OSCE
Mission to Latvia (Heidi Soedergren), took floor in the panel
discussion.

Centre "Baltic Insight" is developing a project for three more
seminars of the like format for ethnic minority NGOs in the Baltic
States and Central Eastern Europe/Former Soviet Union. We hope that
this will triple our success and help provide a positive experience of
training on the regional base.

Report on seminar "Modern Information Technologies and Organisational
Capacity Building" is available from Centre "Baltic Insight". Just let
us know if you need it: Boris <[email protected]>, Dimitrijs
<[email protected]>, phone/fax (Boris) (371) 737 1770.

Dimitrijs Alehins

----------------
(Moderator adds: Our clear intention was, and is, to strengthen the
'NGO-training' component in the entire MINELRES project. So far we
have been just providing information to those NGOs which are capable
of obtaining it - with limited advice on Internet technologies on
individual basis, now we would like to focus on helping more NGOs to
get access to the relevant Internet resources. We hope to receive
positive answer to our application for financing this series of
seminars soon. As soon as we have clarity with funding, we will send
more concrete information about the training to the MINELRES list. 
Boris)    

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