The fourth and final training for potential applicants of IPA CBC programmes among Western Balkan countries was organized in Albania by CBIB Team in close cooperation with the Albanian Ministry of European Integration and Regional Council of Dibra, on 16^th and 17^th October 2008 in Dibra.

Participants and objectives:

There were 21 participants coming from various backgrounds: representing municipality, commune, prefecture, regional council (persons involved in the CBC and potential applicants), coordinators of activities at local level, various NGOs, associations. This event was covered by local media.

Most of trainees plan to be directly involved in the preparation of grant proposals and some of them have had experience in the preparation of projects based on EC procedures.

The main objectives of the course:

• Potential grant beneficiaries have a general understanding on the cross-border programme implementation: what is Call for Proposals (CfP) and the role of the Guidelines for Applicants (GfA) in the CfP.
• Understand what is required from the applicants in the Application Package.
• Understand what is important in preparation for the application process and what CBC partnership is.
• Understand the principles of the logical framework approach and the linkages between the different levels in the LFA.
• Understand what role external factors in the LFA have.
• Understand what role indicators in the LFA have and are aware how to formulate them.
• Understand the principles of the activity based budgeting.
• Understand how to fill in the Application form.

Course flow:

The training was delivered by Mr. Genci Pasko, CBIB local short term expert and a representative from the Albanian Ministry of European Integration, Ms. Evis Disha, Coordinator of CBC Programmes, and CBIB Tirana office representatives were also present.

The training was opened by Ms. Disha, presenting the programme and progress made within the CBC framework and the position of MEI in the whole process. Some of the participants as well took the floor welcoming the training as that would be another opportunity for them to best share and discuss together on common issues of concern regarding project preparation.

The training was consisted of following sessions under the Preparation of the Grant Proposal:

• Introduction and opening by CBIB
• Introduction to IPA and CBC, CfP cycle, grant, guidelines for applicants
• Why it is important to start preparing for CfP as soon as possible and what is CBC partnership?
• Introduction to Logical Framework Approach
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Problem analysis
• Intervention Logic
• External Factors/Indicators
• Activity-based budgeting
• Application Form/Package
• How to link the information of 2 days with the application form

Each day consisted of morning and afternoon sessions that were introduced in combination of theory with exercises/“learning by doing”, and due to the relatively short duration of the training, most of the topics were presented in plenary sessions and followed by “buzzing” – group discussions. Group exercises were organised on the following topics: stakeholder analysis, problem, and objective analysis.

The participants had the opportunity to raise questions, and all of them were answered by the representative of the Ministry of European Integration. Her suggestions and remarks were highly appreciated and helped the participants to grasp the idea of the whole process and the main requirements.

The participants highly appreciated the fact that the presentations were in the Albanian language, as well as the fact that the Manual for potential grant beneficiaries, prepared by CBIB was also distributed to all of them.They appreciated the performance of the CBIB experts and the organisation of the training. It was concrete, based on their practical needs in this field of action, there were given clear data on how to prepare a project proposal, necessary steps and concrete examples.