EF trained NGO representatives examine a pipeline construction site to see if the site is being restored to its natural state as claimed.
Recently, Eurasia Foundation hosted a workshop for several Georgian NGOs, allowing them their first opportunity to exchange ideas on the current state of civic monitoring in Georgia. Civic monitoring – the oversight of government activities by citizen watchdog groups – has become more important in Georgia with the building of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The workshop included presentations from a variety of NGOs to encourage transferable knowledge sharing and to demonstrate the similarities in NGO experiences.
Attendees used the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) technique to perform a self-assessment of Georgians NGOs as a whole and complied recommendations to further develop their organizational methodology skills, staff capacity, communication, resource mobilization and network and coalition building. These recommendations were shared with all the NGOs that were present at the workshop. EF-Georgia’s next step is to incorporate the findings into program design.
The Millennium Challenge Corporation has begun a major road re-construction project across Georgia, and the Georgian government is rapidly privatizing state-owned industries and developing new ones, so the need for public oversight of these projects will be greater than ever before. Eurasia Foundation is working to support these developments through close cooperation with the NGO community. For more information, visit EF Georgia’s web site.
