EFB Community joint training in Mavrovo

36 Fellows, 20 participants of this year’s Fellowship Programme for Young Government Officials from the Western Balkans – Supporting Excellence and Leadership in Governance, and 16 members of EFB Community network, will gather for the third time at Joint Community Training in Mavrovo, Macedonia, on July 14, 2012. The training entitled "A New Cohesion Initiative for the Western Balkans" will focus on regional cooperation and cohesion. The trainers Bernd-Friedrich Voigt and Kerstin Altherr will start with topics such as What is cohesion? What is cooperation? Why does cooperation fail? Is cooperation a prerequisite for cohesion or vice versa? Is cohesion an “instrument” for stability/ a strategy for conflict solution? Following the introductory part on cohesion and cooperation, the session will lead to the main topic for the group: Building a new cooperation/cohesion initiative. The Fellows will come up with their vision of cohesion and cooperation, based upon the project-based approach, exchange of experience and lessons learnt, and by making use of personal knowledge and expertise and finding creative ways of solution. During the actual training, the EFB Community members will work as individuals, pairs and in different size group constellations and also in plenary sessions; the instructions will take into account the diversity of individual backgrounds and expertise among the group. The joint training day brings together the EFB Community members for an interactive and communicative team-event with a single main objective – networking. The objective of this networking event is to integrate different backgrounds and individual expertise of the EFB Community members and encourage and strengthen the development of not only a “social”, but of a “knowledge and expertise” network. Community members will be able to work together and experience different negotiation settings, volatile environments, scarce and re-allocated resources, changes in political agendas and internal conflicts. All participants will have a chance to demonstrate their distinguished leadership, communication and cooperation skills and to express the real team spirit. EFB Community