MDG-F Democratic Economic Governance held Inception Workshop in Neum

The Inception Workshop was focused on strengthening the inter-municipal communication, as well as to link the cantonal, entity and State-level institutions to the Program goals and objectives. All thirteen municipalities that will be partners in the implementation of the Programme during next three years have been introduced on this occasion.

The workshop gathered representatives of institutions from all administrative levels all relevant stakeholders: representatives of BiH Ministry of the Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, BiH Ministry of the Civil Affairs, and of Directorate for Economic Planning, representatives of entity Ministries of the Water supply, Agriculture, and Forestry, and Ministries of the Social Protection and Health, representatives of the governments of Cantons Hercegovina-Neretva, Tuzla and Una-Sana, municipal mayors, directors of Social Work Centers, Communal/Water Companies, municipal managers of the Infrastructure Departments and/or public utilities companies, municipal managers of the Social Departments well as representatives of civil sector organizations.

All participants were actively involved marking the Programme results framework within three factors: Relevance, Feasibility (Impact), and Sustainability thus making revision of the Programme document and jointly planning future activities.

At the workshop, experts from both socio-economic and water sector were able to present their methodologies as well as their lessons learned throughout their professional careers. Participants had an opportunity to learn about the Programme’s plan of work during its implementation and to directly contribute to its results framework improvement. Participatory approach was used during the entire workshop encouraging interaction between participants and their active engagement. Furthermore, the NGOs that will be direct implementing partners at the local level were able to introduce their methodologies and to share their experience from other BiH municipalities. On the other side, representatives of the private sector shared their lessons learned while implementing water sector projects in other communities, and were able to present a more technical overview of the project.

The workshop also provided opportunity to jointly plan future implementation dynamic and created forum where participants actively planed next activities such as: establishment of the Municipal Management Boards and drafting terms of reference for development of Water Supply Master plans for each of partner municipalities.

All participants expressed satisfaction with the high quality of participatory approach of the Programme and high quality of presentations, which resulted in established partnerships among workshop participants.

The official ceremony of signing of the Memorandums of Understanding between Programme and partner municipalities will take place at the end of June 2010.

The MDG-F Democratic Economic Governance Programme “Securing Access to Water through Institutional Development and Infrastructure” is jointly implemented by UNDP and UNICEF in partnership with the BiH Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, BiH Ministry of Civil Affairs, the FBiH and RS Ministries of Agriculture, Forestry, and Water Management, partner municipalities and their associated water utility companies, and civil society organizations.