On 9 and 10 November 2017, Clingendael Academy delivered a “Training-of-Trainers” workshop in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was the first training of a longer series that is organized within the cooperation between the Clingendael Institute and Analitika, funded by the Netherlands’ embassy MATRA fund. The Trainer from Clingendael Academy for this workshop was Adriaan Zondag, Training and Research Fellow.

The 15 participants were invited by Analitika, and comprised of Analitika staff, participants from other policy research organizations, and civil servants from various Ministries and agencies from Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

The goal of this training was twofold:

1.    To increase participants’ capacity to develop and organize quality training courses for professionals
2.    To strengthen participants’ presentation skills and skills training capacities. 

During the first day, participants learned more about their own learning styles through a self-assessment, and discussed how these various styles can be accommodated in a training program. In subgroups, they worked on designing a 1-week training program, which was subsequently discussed plenary. The final part of the day was aimed at discussing various digital tools to incorporate in training programs, and how they can be used within the framework of a training program. 

The second day mainly looked at how to incorporate interactive training forms within a single training session, and how to spark interactivity amongst participants, both in large audience events such as congresses, as well as smaller training sessions. During the latter part of the day, participants prepared their own short presentations, and were asked to present in front of the group. The other participants and the trainer provided feedback on the presentation styles, and gave tips for improvement.

This workshop is part of the project “Policies through Knowledge: Improving Policy-making Capacities and Processes in Bosnia and Herzegovina” which is implemented by the Center for Social Research Analitika and the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael, in partnership with the Civil Service Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The project is financed by MATRA programme within the Netherlands Fund for Regional Partnerships of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.