Capacity Building Workshop for Local Administration Election Candidates

The workshop, which was launched on August 17, 2018 in coordination with a number of community activities inside and outside Damascus and continued for two days, highlighted on its first day the role of local administrative council elections and the importance of running for membership 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 second day included training on how to write the electoral programme and formulate the electoral statement. The importance of the candidate’s mental image was discussed, and the participants were divided into working groups, where each candidate wrote a draft of his final statement and discussed it in front of those present.

The two-day workshop was an opportunity to shed light on one of the roles of these elections, which is (running for membership in local councils), with the participation of 18 candidates from different governorates (Damascus rural, Homs, Hama, Latakia, Tartous, Sweida, Aleppo, Idlib) who were selected based on an electronic form published on the “Your Role” campaign page on Facebook, taking into account the representation of youth, women, and members of previous local councils, in addition to participants running for the elections for the first time.

The workshop participants discussed the general election scene from the perspective of the candidates running in these elections, the motives and ideas that contributed to formulating this decision, and finally discussed the current needs of local communities and the challenges that will face the upcoming councils to work on meeting these needs, within the goals and objectives of the Local Administration Law and the powers provided to local councils, 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 will work to achieve if they succeed in these elections.

The workshop also 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 will be achieved 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 this electoral campaign, 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.

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 granted by the law to the councils were presented, as well as the challenges they will face and the role they will play in important current issues such as development, reconstruction, reconciliations, securing resources, meeting and improving services, in addition to continuous communication with civil and local society and involving them in planning and implementation.

It should be noted that this workshop comes within a context that extends to include more than one training workshop and dialogue sessions that include candidates and other community activists, interested parties and specialists.