Awareness Raising on Development Cooperation Issues in Lithuania

The Association LITDEA (Lithuanian Development Education and Awareness Raising Network) uniting 9 Lithuanian CSOs working on development cooperation and awareness raising issues is currently implementing the short-term (6 months) project titled “Society’s Awareness Raising on Development Cooperation Issues”.

The main aim of the project is to impart information about development cooperation to the public, encouraging not only the interest in this field but also the active participation, e.g. by contributing to the elaboration of Lithuana’s development cooperation activities. The project aims at inducing the interest of society for global problems and ultimately contributes to the strengthening of developing countries. The background of the project is the lack of information and insufficient education on development cooperation among the Lithuanian public, which limits the active contribution of Lithuanian citizens to development.

The heads of subdistricts and representatives of local communities of Lithuanian municipalities are the target group of the project as they have direct contacts with the majority of Lithuanian inhabitants every day. 80 of them, selected according to their motivation, will participate in the trainings on development cooperation issues. Experienced experts from member organisations of LITDEA, having knowledge on development cooperation issue and skills for working with local authorities, will prepare and provide the trainings in mid-autumn, 2010. The participants will get consultations about involving the concrete aspects of development cooperation issues into their existing and, especially, future action plans and will at the same time become multipliers for spreading the information further to their local community members.

This is a pilot project which is planned to be continued next year involving new participants. It is
implemented under the Development Cooperation and Democracy Promotion Programme of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania.

For more information please contact Ms. Raimonda Kucinskaite, raimonda@npi.lt

Information provided by Raimonda Kucinskaite, National Development Institute