CAPACITY BUILDING PROGRAMME

Among the many activities and projects organised and undertaken by the Heinrich Boell Foundation in preparation for the World Summit there has been a strong focus on capacity building as an attempt to enforce and ensure civil society's participation at the WSSD.

To introduce a new generation of NGO activists to international environmental and developmental policy, the Heinrich Boell Foundation developed a three-step programme consisting of capacity building workshops for young NGO activists from various regions and a two-month internship and training program in Brussels and Washington. In addition, the participants attended the 3rd PrepComm asnd will travel to Johannesburg to actively participate in the WSSD.

The programme's overall long-term objective was to promote, support and train the next generation of NGO activists and to help them improve their skills in lobbying, networking and strategy development. Its short-term objective was to enable them to participate efficiently at the World Summit. The long-term effect of the training program, moreover, will surely reach far beyond Johannesburg.

TRAINING COURSES

In 2001 the regional offices of the Heinrich Boell Foundation organised capacity building training courses in Nairobi, Ramallah, Rio de Janeiro, San Salvador and Cairo for young activists from their partner organisations as well as from other regional NGOs. The courses aimed at empowering activists in environmental and developmental NGOs to learn about environmental diplomacy, developments from Rio 1992, and substantive challenges towards Johannesburg 2002. With a particular focus on the poverty agenda, water issues and gender aspects, participants were instructed and practised information gathering, advocacy and media engagement.

INTERNSHIPS

From the participants of the traning courses, fourteen selected patricipants were given the chance to extend the capacity building by doing internships at key environmental and developmental NGOs and institutions in Brussels and Washington. Six of them went to Washington and eight to Brussels. The idea was to give those people a deeper insight into international politics and at the same time improve their knowledge on specific issues that they can use for their local work after the internship. During their internship, the participants were supported and received additional training by the local offices of the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Washington and Brussels.

ATTENDING PREPCOMMS AND THE WORLD SUMMIT

The participants also attended the PrepComm III in New York. There, the participants followed the official negotiations, linked up with other representatives from civil society and identified opportunities to feed into the World Summit process. A brief report of our interns from the PrepComm III is available to the right. Some of the participants will also attend the PrepComm IV and the World Summit itself.

The participants who went to Brussels compiled six "Titien Documents" and a brief assessment and comment on the outcome of Prep Comm III in New York into our World Summit Paper #11: Genertation Jo'burg, providing an insight into the Southern view of the Rio Process.