The first training of the potential applicants for the IPA cross-border programmes in the Western Balkans took place on December 5th – 7th 2007 in Struga (Hotel Solferino). This training was organised by the East West Institute and the CBIB project, and was supported by the Ministry of Local Self Government of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the Ministry of European Integration of Albania.

The training targeted the eligible applicants for the cross-border programme the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia-Albania. There were 31 participants in total, 22 from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, representatives of municipalities or regions, region development agencies, NGOs, universities, SMEs, and 9 participants from Albania.

The working language was English, without simultaneous translation.

The training materials were prepared by the CBIB EU short-term experts and the training was delivered by the CBIB local short-term experts.

Objectives:

The main objectives of the course were to familiarise potential applicants with:

• different steps in the implementation of the cross-border programme and the necessary procedures – i.e. Call for Proposals (CfP), evaluation, pre-financing, etc.
• different steps in the CBC project preparation (PCM/Logframe approach).

Important elements of the methodology of the training are the following:

• Interactive approach: Combination of theoretical sessions with practical work/learning exercise: “learning by doing”. Due to the relatively short duration of the training (three days), most of the topics were presented in plenary sessions (presentations followed by discussions and/or “buzzing” sessions).
• Group exercises: three different approaches were followed with regards to group work exercise:
• Small group exercises – discussions in small groups: intervention logic, formulating indicators, understanding application form;
• Big group exercises – discussions of all in one group of topics related to: CfP Guidelines, Logframe, Indicators, Budgeting, financial and administrative provisions;
• ecap on day 2 and 3 (each participant answers a question related to a topic/issue discussed the day before).

Conclusions and lessons learned:

Since this was a cross-border event, the training was also used for networking and partner search. This was an additional value of the event, but at the same time it had its disadvantages: working language had to be English and since all the participants are not so familiar with the language, the impact of such an event would be much better if it was organized in a local language.

It would be much easier for the trainees and the training would be more interactive if there were les participants. The trainers did not have enough time involve the participants that were not so active. Working with smaller groups would have a much better impact. The maximum number of participants for this kind of training should be 20 to 25.