When the fourth round of this international course held a week-long workshop in Vinnytsia in the Ukraine recently, it was an opportunity for the 20 or so delegates to share their experiences and strategies for continuing to develop leadership in their towns and cities.
This round’s regional workshop for participants from Eastern Europe and Asia was held just over one year into the 18-month long training course in Vinnytsia, which offered high summer temperatures – almost 30°C – during the transition from spring to summer. The next time this group meet – at the end of the year – they will be hosted by their African colleagues.
The delegates met in Vinnytsia, the twelfth largest city in the Ukraine – a country whose south-eastern region is suffering from a multifaceted armed conflict – located in the heart of a fertile rural landscape. This was the third time the delegates had met during their training course.
Invaluable mutual support
The meeting was held in Vinnytsia thanks to the efforts of one of the group’s participants, Hanna Davydenko, who is an opposition member of Vinnytsia’s town council and who hosted the workshop. Every effort was made to ensure optimum conditions during the week’s round of seminars, field trips, and discussions. A programme of practical and theoretical capacity development, interwoven with concrete support for each other as professional elected leaders, was created under the guidance of programme managers at ICLD, with a variety of speakers and mentors in the form of leading Swedish local politicians.
Hanna Davydenko, participant in the leadership skills training programme and leading oppostion local politician in Vinnytsia, in the Ukraine.
“A week like this generates numerous opportunities for much-needed discussions where we can really support each other and share experiences that are important to us in our respective roles as participants and mentors,” say Hanna Davidenko and Anna Sibinska from Gothenburg, who is one of the programme’s mentors.
Marlene Haara and Anna Sibinska, Swedish mentors in the leadership skills training programme, attended the workshop in Vinnytsia.
More specifically, Anna is Hanna’s mentor and they both say that the opportunity for skills development and in-service training with colleagues from several different countries is very popular with elected politicians. The fact that they are both dedicated to their respective causes became very clear during the week, with Anna at great pains to provide a strong presence and substantial support for her international colleagues, and Hanna – a young and passionate politician – going above and beyond in her role as host.
EU treaty on equal rights
One of the delegates from another ICLD programme also comes from Vinnytsia and took part in the week’s seminars. Svitlana Sulimova, who works in the municipality’s support function for the mayor on equality issues, has taken part in the “Local Democracy and Social Sustainability with a Gender Perspective” programme and has, as a result of the change project she ran, built a clear platform for herself in her municipality. She is passionate about Vinnytsia becoming the first Ukrainian municipality to adopt the EU treaty on equal opportunities for men and women and drawing up its own, local policy.
Svitlana Sulimova, equality consultant in Vinnytsia.
Svitlana also testifies as to how important it is to establish local networks during the training programmes in order to promote strategic development issues at the local level, noting that she has received support from colleagues and politicians in several other countries, including Sweden, when it comes to helping her progress her own municipality’s efforts to increase equality.
The week also saw the group pay the course’s customary visit to the local town council, where they met with several of the local decision-makers. The programme often encounters substantial interest from the local media all over the world, but it was particularly pronounced in Vinnytsia, and a number of features on and interviews with the delegates took place over the course of the week.
The “Local Political Leaders – Capacitating Women in Politics” leadership skills training programme is currently in its fifth round and around 125 politicians have now either participated or are actively participating in an ongoing round. All of the alumni participants form part of a network of leading local politicians that has grown stronger and more extensive from one year to another since the training started under the aegis of ICLD in partnership with SKL (the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions).
Democracies need strong women
ICLD launched the “Local Political Leaders – Capacitating Women in Politics” training programme in 2013, and is currently planning a sixth round of the programme to commence in the spring of 2018. When that ends, a total of 150 leading local politicians will have been given the opportunity to enhance their leadership skills and network with other women in the same position from elsewhere in the world.
“The programme continues to play an important role on many levels,” says Programme Director, Kristin Ekström, of ICLD. “It not only works to increase equality in the local political assemblies, it also acts as a general tool for optimising conditions that enable local leaders to take on global challenges and promote their citizens’ common good.”
Facts and figures:
• Swedish political assemblies are the most equitable in the world, with 30% of municipal executive boards chaired by women. The global average for leading female politicians at a local level is 9%.
• The programme is designed for women in leading roles in local political assemblies in 21 different countries in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, offering networking and skills development opportunities.