From Myths to Facts: Training Ukrainian civil society on the EU Association
The new training cycle of the Civic School for Sound EU Practice (CiSEP) started in three Ukrainian cities with workshops on facts and myths about the EU association process.
How to disguise myths concerning the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement? How to inform the public about it? And what is the real content of this document, signed by the EU and Ukraine in 2014? These were some of the questions that the new CiSEP Fellows answered during the workshop “From Myths to facts. Arguments for Ukraine’s EU Association”, organized in the beginning of July by the Capacity Development Team of the IEP together with partners in three Ukrainian cities: Lviv, Dnipro and Chernihiv.
Each of the workshops gathered 25 change-makers from Ukrainian civil society organizations and media, who applied to learn more about the content of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. Two consecutive workshops for the same groups will take place in September and October. Together, the three trainings build up Level A “Basics of the AA/DCFTA” of the new project cycle.
The July workshop concentrated on three main fields: EU institutions and legislative process, content of the Association Agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (AA/DCFTA) as well as argumentation training. The fellows were particularly interested in finding out more about specific provisions of the Association Agreement. Many voiced out the concern that the low level of factual knowledge about this document within the Ukrainian public leaves it vulnerable to misperception and manipulations.
Besides, teambuilding exercises and activities brought the new fellows together, prepared them for the group work in the next sessions and strengthened the regional CiSEP networks. Upon successful finishing of the Level A training series, the fellows will join the CiSEP Alumni network. They will also be invited to apply for next modules of the new CiSEP project cycle: Level B and Level C trainings, dedicated to deepening the AA/DCFTA knowledge and developing trainer and multiplier skills. These modules will start in fall 2017 and spring 2018, accordingly.
This IEP training series is supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.
Our partners in Ukraine: Polissya Foundation for International and Regional Studies (Chernihiv), NGO “Public Chamber of Ukraine” (Dnipro), Civil Network OPORA (Lviv), Odessa Regional Organization of All-Ukrainian NGO “Committee of Voters of Ukraine”.
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