First BRIDGE TtF organized by IFES in Kyrgyzstan

First BRIDGE Train the Facilitators (TtF) workshop has been conducted in Bishkek during 4-15 March. The workshop was organized by the Representative Office of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in the Kyrgyz Republic continuing to assist CEC and SRS in building training capacities of these institutions.

The TtF was attended by 22 (14 female, 8 male) professionals, key staff of the CEC, SRS and IFES responsible for the training, capacity building, voter education and information. A team of the TtF complete facilitators will make part of the pool of trainers and curriculum writes of the Kyrgyz Central Election Commission (CEC) and State Registration Service (SRS) training centers. This activity is an important step towards institutionalization of the CEC and SRS training practices and bringing them to a new level, which is important step in preparations for the upcoming parliamentary elections in 2020.

The workshop was facilitated by Pavel Cabacenco, accrediting BRIDGE facilitator and Renata Levovski, BRIDGE facilitator/Head of the IFES Kyrgyzstan office. During the workshop all participants had a chance to present their ice-breakers, facilitate in pairs two sessions and write themselves one session. In the middle of the workshop, on 8th of March, future TtF complete facilitators together with IFES colleagues from all over the world celebrated International Women’s day and expressed their support to the IFES efforts to insure better participation and representation of women in political process. BRIDGE facilitators one more time reminded them that gender is one of the cross-cutting topics of the entire BRIDGE curricula.

Evaluating the TtF many participants mentioned that the workshop contributed to their professional and personal development, that they learned a lot about the adult learning methodologies and facilitation technics, BRIDGE requirements and philosophy. The workshop was highly appreciated and considered timely and important initiative, which brings CEC and SRS to a higher level of the training and capacity building.