EAST EAST PROGRAM: PARTNERSHIP BEYOND BORDERS
2000-2001

Program Coordinator: Gulnura Mehdi

Goals and objectives

• to promote cooperation in identifying regional experiences, expertise and best practices for solving urgent social issues;
• to promote exchange visits, trainings and workshops in the fields of human rights, NGO development, reforms in ecology, development of legal services and local authorities, Internet development and libraries with involvement of OSI-Azerbaijan's other programs and/or in cooperation with other donors;
• to reduce the imbalance between the number of participants from the capital and from the regions through increasing the number of regional participants

Context

• Information gap both between Azerbaijan and other post-socialist societies and Azerbaijan and western countries;
• Lack of cooperation between local NGOs as well as between local NGOs and governmental structures;
• Lack of resources to conduct international events for the development of various fields of society as well as for participating in the events abroad

Process/Implementation

Since ecology is one of the key issues for our country we intend to expand our activities by continuing to find potential partners in the Central Asian countries. We should pay a special attention to this problem as during the Soviet period we didn't have a plan of activities in the field of ecology. This problem is concerned with the factor that Azerbaijan as well as the other countries of the region above had served as raw materials appendage for the leading country for a long time. In this sense to continue organizing events on sustainable development will be especially useful for us. We're planning to conduct meetings with partner organizations from Caspian Sea countries in order to develop an environmental management in sustainable development system.

Further, we intend developing projects in the fields like health care, education, mass media, information and NGO development. It's supposed to organize study tours for specialists in various fields of development to the countries that can share their best practices with us.

Outcomes/results

• Contacts established among specialists on the issues of ecological security, education, reforming of the society and development of local government for its special importance for Azerbaijan;
• Increased number of participants of the events in the network, who applied newly learned experiences for developing new project ideas in the other programs of OSI-Azerbaijan;
• Long-term projects and joint research program ideas appeared after workshops;
• Public response and awareness raised through conducting events and putting articles into newspapers