IFES Civic Education Workshop, Romania, August 31 - September 4, 1992

  Introduction

The Workshop in Democratic Leadership skills was part of an on-going comprehensive program in civic education in Romania sponsored by the International Foundation for Electoral Systems through a grant from the U. S. Agency for International Development. The workshop was presented as the first public project of a year-long IFES civic education program to be conducted throughout Romania.

The workshop was designed to present basic skills of democratic leadership to a select group of Romanian leaders. It is hoped that the participants will also serve as a key resource base to assist in the development of future IFES-led civic education programs.

Although the original plan was to identify fifteen leaders to participate in a five-day, comprehensive workshop, a decision was made to open the workshop to a large number of interested persons from diverse organizations and interest groups to show that IFES programs were indeed non-partisan and "open to all." This was a particularly sensitive point in that the national elections were scheduled to take place in less than 30 days.

Naturally, this led to a larger number of participants (124 on the first day), greater awareness of the need for such training throughout more communities, and more news coverage through television, newspapers, and periodicals. The tradeoff was that the workshop could not be as comprehensive and as individually-directed as originally planned, but the overall positive impact was much greater than expected.