BRIDGE for the Diplomats of Moldova

UNDP/Moldova with the financial support of EU, implements the election assistance project. The project has vastly used BRIDGE as a capacity building tool for electoral administration while implementing BRIDGE TtF and BRIDGE Strategic and Financial Planning workshop. This time project responded to the new electoral needs in Moldova which derived from the law amendments allowing out of country polling stations outside the Moldovan embassies in foreign countries. The 5 days workshop on external voting module was conducted for the representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Central Election Commission of Moldova. The aim of the workshop was to make diplomats, who will be involved in out of country voting administration, aware of world experience, best practices and the possible challenges during their elections missions out of country.

2 workshops were conducted for 2 different groups of participants from July 5-9, and July 12-16, 2010 in Chisinau, Moldova.

Facilitation Team:

Event was opened by the fully accredited BRIDGE facilitator, Secretary of the Central Election Commission of Moldova Mr. Iurie Ciocan and the Chief Technical Advisor of UNDP/Moldova Mr. Rudolf Elbling. Workshops were led by Shalva Tskhakaia and Doina Bordeianu in partnership with the Elections/Out of country voting expert Filon Morar. Workshops were co-facilitated by semi-accredited facilitators, Mariana Musteata, Veaceslav Balan, Pavel Cabacenco and Corneliu Pasat. Co-facilitators performed in an excellent manner with a BRIDGE spirit and therefore, achieved workshop accreditation level.

Workshop Participants and content:

16 representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as 7 Representatives of Central election Commission of Moldova and Representatives of IFES Moldova participated in the workshops;

The content of the workshops was selected in close cooperation with Central Election Commission and UNDP Moldova, because the Referendum with the extended out of country voting has to be implemented within 2 months after the workshops, we tried to make the content as practical as possible. The workshops included external voting case studies, methods of registration and voting, polling and counting simulations, code of conduct, civic and voter education.

Participants’ Evaluation:

Moldovan diplomats enjoyed BRIDGE workshops, interactive methodology and BRIDGE spirit. Participants filled out evaluation sheets after each day of training; the feedback was mostly appreciative and highly positive.