Between 13 and 16 September 2010, the Cidi project – Capacity building of civil society to take part in policy dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  – held its second seminar and network workshop, entitled Building CSO networks communicational capacities for effective civil dialogue, for issue-based civil society networks.

The Cidi project is a two year project, financed by the EU. It is being implemented by a consortium consisting of Kronauer Consulting (Bosnia and Herzegovina), COWI (Denmark), ATOS Consulting (UK) and the Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs (Croatia).  The project is providing technical assistance designed to facilitate the development of policy dialogue between government and civil society organisations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This was the second of six seminars and network workshops which will take place over the next 10 months.   At the seminar, representatives of six issue-based networks had the opportunity to learn about challenges faced when engaging in policy dialogue, communication strategies, stakeholder analysis, communication, presentation skills and leadership for CSO networks. In addition, they also discussed good practice examples of successful policy dialogue and cooperation between civil society organisations and government institutions in the Republic of Croatia.

The seminar and workshop were attended by 33 representatives of the following issue-based networks:

• Savez slijepih Republike Srpske (Alliance of blind people, Republika Srpska); • Savez gluhih i nagluhih Bosne i Hercegovine (Alliance of deaf and partially deaf people, BiH); • Savez udruženja za pomoć mentalno nedovoljno razvijenim licima Republike Srpske (Alliance of associations working to support people with mental disabilities, Republika Srpska); • Ring (working on the prevention of people trafficking); • Volontiram (I volunteer, working on the promotion of voluntarism); • Mono (working on youth policy)