IEC Jordan continues professional development

IEC Jordan continues professional development of electoral stakeholders through Introduction to Electoral Administration Workshops

IEC Jordan in cooperation with IFES Jordan and with the financial assistance of USAID launched long-term professional development program for its staff and stakeholders using the BRIDGE curriculum. During 2014 over 200 officials were trained through ten BRIDGE Intro workshops. IEC intends to conduct series of Intro workshops as well as other specialized BRIDGE workshops during 2015.

Introduction to Electoral Administration workshop was conducted by expert level facilitator Natia Kashakashvili (IFES Jordan) and workshop level facilitators Samar Tarawneh (IEC Jordan) and Katia Madanat (IFES Jordan) from March 30 to April 2, 2015 in Geneva Hotel, Amman, Jordan. Nineteen participants (among them 11 female) were selected to create the mixed group of stakeholders from the IEC HQ staff, District Election Officials and representatives of Civil Society Organizations. CSOs were represented by 10 participants, which corresponds to one of the IEC initiatives to enlarge involvement of the Civil Society in the Elections.

The novelty of this workshop was restructured agenda that reflected recommendations (including decreasing the workshop from five to four days) from the participants of Intro Workshops in 2014. The workshop participants received knowledge about the specific phases of the Electoral Cycle with the emphasis of International Obligations and reflection of the Jordanian context through all the sessions. The workshop was very informative for the CSOs. One of the participants emphasized that: “through the topics presented according to the Electoral Cycle, we – the stakeholders, understand better now the IEC efforts in conducting the elections”.

Participants actively participated in all the activities and showed interest in almost all the topics presented. Throughout the evaluation participants noted the smooth conduct of activities/session and good division of roles between the facilitation team. In addition, participants expressed their admiration for the methodology used in the workshop, which made them fully involved. Participant highlighted the flexibility and harmony among the facilitators that led to positive learning environment and allowed participants to share knowledge and experience from the facilitators and other participants.

Through the daily and final evaluation participants positively evaluated the workshop and noted:

• Introduction workshop gave us all the basic knowledge and triggered us to go into the details of each topic presented;
• We appreciate IEC efforts to continue building capacity of election officials through the professional development program and we want to participate in other specialized workshops related to specific role in the upcoming elections;
• The topics presented widened our horizon of international best practices as well as highlighted Jordanian case;
• It was a good practice to go out of the box and analyze the electoral topics through the group-works.

Participants expressed the willingness to attend such workshops in the future, namely on the following topics: Electoral Systems, Conflict resolution, management and planning, media and elections, assessing legal framework of elections; also specialized workshops like procurement in elections.