July 21-28, 2013, Bohuslav, Kyiv Oblast — Advocacy and communication – two important activities of civil society organizations – where in the focus of the Summer School 2013 conducted by MAMA-86. The School gathered a total of 40 trainees from various parts of Ukraine.

The eight days of training were split into two training courses: (i) Civil Society Impact on Policy-making and (ii) Effective Communication and the Civil Society Sector. The training sessions, led by advocacy policy analyst Roman Kobets and public communication expert Taras Kuzmov, combined theory and practical group work.

The first training dealt with how to promote draft legislation and regulations or recommendations on such documents. Local environmental protection plans were used as case studies so that the organizations would be able to use the skills thus gained in practice in their localities.

According to MAMA-86 Institutional Development Manager Roman Shutov, "the trainees received algorithms of actions for promoting local regulations based on clear delimitation of their development and approval phases, as well as on analyses of stakeholders' positions and opportunities and threats of advocacy activities in each of these phases."

The communication training also focused on an algorithm – the one for the development and implementation of a communication campaign: identify your goal, formulate your message, analyze your target audience and stakeholders, create a slogan, and select communication formats and channels. Like the first training, the second one also had a practical range: to help develop an effective campaign to back the Green Consumer Week 2013, which will be held from late September to early October and dedicated to sustainable food.

The second training resulted in draft communication campaign plans developed by groups for the Week, which were highly commended by the trainer as creative and realistic.

The School became possible thanks to financial support from the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC), as well as a grant provided by the NGO ""Center to Encourage Citizens' Activity and Initiative 'Yednannya'" through a voucher contest for civil society organizational development funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

Roman Shutov, MAMA-86 Institutional Development Manager: "The School has met our expectations. There was dedication on the part of trainees – we could feel that it was just what they needed, meaning we had chosen the right topics. I'm grateful to the trainers, who not only worked to the highest standards but also maximally took into account our specifics and needs. And further on, everything will depend on us: acquiring new knowledge is not enough, we must also make use of it to make our work more effective"

All photos from the Summer School are available on the Facebook MAMA-86 page at
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.489632727786322.1073741837.190090101073921&type=1