In May-August 2014,  Civil Society Institute with support of the
Czech Embassy implemented a regional project “Assistance to civil society
development through strategic planning and implementation.” 

For four months 18 non-governmental organizations
of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia have not only participated in working
meetings but also received a long-term on-line consultancy from experienced CSI
trainers on questions of their interests, particularly regarding organizational
development, proper planning and distribution of resources, writing competitive
proposals, organization of diverse events, improving public relations and
other.

On 17-20 July this year, a three -day training seminar
was organized in Tbilisi, Georgia on “Strategic planning of organization”,
which was attended by 18 representatives of NGOs from Armenia, Azerbaijan and
Georgia.

The seminar included the following topics:
analysis of organizational capacities, definition of needs, goals and issues, strategy
development, financial planning and definition of issues, development of
competitive proposals and budgets, as well as skills on working and cooperation
with mass media and journalists, and skills on presentation of the organization
in social media.

After the training the participants developed
their own organizational or initiative group's strategic plans, using the newly
obtained knowledge, and the trainers provided on-line consultancy.

Taking into consideration the interest and
willingness of participants to learn more information, another training seminar
was organized after the end of the project, on August 29-30 in Armenia on
stages of organizational development, planning and management, budget development,
involvement of volunteers and effective use of social media.

The NGO participants of the projects evaluated
the training and cooperation with Civil Society Institute as useful and
effective, for in addition to theoretic and practical knowledge they also had
an opportunity to request and receive consultancy at any time.

Some excerpts of participants' evaluations are
presented below:

Nina Jikia, humanitarian-cultural foundation
“Sukhumi”, Georgia

“The training on strategic planning, at which I had
an honor to participate, was really important and useful for me. I received
valuable knowledge on strategic planning and was assured once more on
importance of strategy as a tool to define the organizational priorities.

I started to pay more attention on organizational
strategic goals and expected results, become more informed about methods of
effective communication with mass media, on “how to advertise yourself” and
attract media's attention in order to achieve our goals. I am thankful to all
our trainers for effective, interesting and informative training, which armed
me with new knowledge and greater enthusiasm for work.”

Anahit Tovmasyan, Center of Civil Initiatives,
Nagorno Karabakh

“I liked very much the training format and
method. Everything was organized very well, and I am satisfied with the whole
training. To be more concrete, I liked very much the sessions on how to write
proposals and do SWOT analysis, how to work in social media and with
journalists more efficiently, how to calculate and distribute program costs,
how to develop organization in general. I also need to learn how to obtain
funding and prepare reports on implemented projects.

The trainers and training place were selected
very properly,  and the coordinators'
cooperation was very smooth. Thanks to everyone.”

Ani
Khachatryan, Armenian Progressive Youth NGO, Armenia

“The training on strategic planning, although was
short but useful, particularly for its combination of theory and practice. I
will definitely use the gained knowledge in my work. The training was also a
forum for meeting representatives of other organizations and building network
with them.”

The project “Assistance to civil society
development through strategic planning and implementation”  was implemented by CSI in cooperation with «NESENHUTI Brno» of Czech
Republic, «Abkhazientercon Fund» of
Georgia and «Democracy Monitor» of
Azerbaijan with financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Czech
Republic.