Workshop on "Capacity Building for Candidates for Local Administrative Councils"

The Nation Building Movement concluded the activities of the “Capacity Building for Candidates for Local Administrative Councils” workshop within the “Your Role” campaign at its headquarters in Damascus.

The workshop began on its first day to shed light on the role of local council elections and the importance of running for membership in local councils by reading the general scene of the elections from the point of view of a group of candidates from different Syrian regions, in order to run in these elections, and the motives and ideas.

The workshop contributed to formulating the nomination decision and discussing the current needs of local communities and the challenges that will face the upcoming councils to work on meeting these needs, and the extent of the candidates’ ability to formulate a clear development vision for the future of their local communities and the goals that they must achieve based on that if they succeed in these elections. Therefore, we worked with them through this workshop based on the local administration and general elections laws, and with the help of a group of experts and specialists to build their capabilities in formulating all these ideas and visions in an electoral program with clear features and goals to be the basis for launching their electoral campaign, and enhancing communication skills with their local communities to present these elections, and the mechanism for dealing with various media and electoral gatherings to reach the largest segment of the elected and thus ensure their access to local councils.

To ensure that participants are able to formulate their electoral programs and draw up their campaign plan in a realistic and achievable manner, the second day included training on how to write the electoral program and formulate the electoral statement. The importance of the candidate’s mental image was discussed, and participants were divided into working groups, where each candidate wrote a draft of his final statement and discussed it in front of the attendees.

In conclusion, the tasks and roles required of local councils in the next phase were discussed in light of the evaluation of previous councils, and the powers given to the councils by law were presented, as well as the challenges they will face and the role they will play in important current issues such as development, reconstruction, reconciliation, securing resources, meeting and improving services, in addition to constant communication with civil and local society and involving them in planning and implementation.