Building and Strengthening Participatory Governance (Asian Region)

Objectives:

• To build the capacity of civil society to influence and improve the rules of engagement for civil society in governance at national and international levels; 
• · To promote cross-learning and knowledge-sharing on participatory governance; and 
• · To advocate for increased space for CSO involvement in global governance.

Geographical Spread:

Key areas/components:

• Regional Skills-Building Workshop for the Asian region: The regional skills-building workshop is to help participants to enrich and expand their understanding and skills in participatory governance approaches and practices
• Mentoring and Exchange Visits: The knowledge and skills gained through the Regional Skills Building Workshop will be sustained and supported through mentoring and exposure visits for selected practitioners from CSOs and local government who will benefit from the direct support, coaching and expertise of more experienced organizations like PRIA.
• Innovation grants: ‘Innovation grants’ will be provided by CIVICUS for direct operational support to strategically selected participatory governance initiatives. PRIA would be instrumental in identifying and reviews the grantees.

Key outputs:

• The Regional Skills-Building Workshops for Asia Region The first Regional Skills-Building Workshop for South Asia was held from 20th – 26th August 2008. The principal objective of the Regional Skills Building Workshop was to help participants to enrich and expand their understanding and skills in participatory governance approaches and practices. 
• 22 participants in total were able to attend the Regional Skills-Building Workshop - three from Sri Lanka, four from Nepal and Bangladesh respectively and the rest from India attended the workshop. 
• The exposure visit was held from the 8th to the 13th June 2009. The exposure visit was organised in the state of Bihar, an intervention site of PRIA where the participants were exposed to some of the Participatory Governance tools. 
• The online mentoring forum has had 18 topics of discussion and 73 posts from all the participants. The online mentoring forum has had 877 hits. In addition to the online mentoring forum, more than twelve rounds of common e-mails were sent to all the participants informing them of the discussions on the forum. Additionally personal mails were sent to each participant s encouraging them to actively contribute to the mentoring forum.

Year/Period:

Client: