Bridge Introduction workshop in Cairo Egypt

 Bridge Introduction to Electoral Administration Workshop

The workshop funded and organized by LAS (League of Arab States) and supported by UNDP.

As scheduled, the workshop (Introduction to Electoral Administration Module) was conducted on 29 May – 2 June, face to face phase of preparation took place from 26-28, three days earlier to the event, venue for both preparation and implementation was training room inside LAS building.

Five facilitators form LAS and myself have worked in the preparation and implementation of the workshop. The whole team of facilitators have teamed up to develop the required materials and agreed on the final agenda and presentations. Two semi accredit facilitators were quite active and energetic during the preparation and implementation of the workshop, and they got the workshop level by the end of the course.

The group of facilitators comprised:

Shuhub NAJIB, Accrediting facilitator, UNDP

Ahmed AMEEN, Workshop facilitator,LAS

Dr. Ali MUSA, Workshop facilitator,LAS

Mahmoud AL SHAHAT, Workshop facilitator,LAS

Adel BEN ABDALLAH, semi-accredited facilitator,LAS

 Ahmed ADEL, semi-accredited facilitator,LAS  

25 employee from different departments of LAS attended the workshop, 16 out of the total number were women.

It is worth noting that a few number of participants has electoral background, especially those who were involved in observation missions organized by LAS in the past. On the other hand, a large number of them were exposed to in depth electoral process for the first time, as they noted in the evaluation forms. We realized this through the questionnaire we handed out to them before the commencement of the workshop.

General outcome, all participants were satisfied with the training methodologies utilized during the workshop. Most of them were eager to participate in different exercises, and volunteered to be part of particle side of each session. They acknowledged that the knowledge they have acquired through simple exercises differed from the lectures and theoretical presentations.

Most of them expressed gratitude to the facilitators, who are their colleagues delivering the sessions, and spoke highly of their capacity and knowledge.

Few participants express their willingness to participate in TtF, and wondered if any workshop is scheduled to be organized soon.

Some of the feedback we received was that each observer should participate in such module prior to their deployment.