SALGA and GCI Provide Provincial LED Training for Municipal Officials
Beginning on October 18th, SALGA and GlobalCommunity Initiatives (GCI)have provided a two-day training session on sustainable development to municipal officials from cities and rural areas around the country. Trainers from both organisations are traveling to six provinces to talk about how to use effective strategies to lift people out of poverty while at the same time restoring the natural resource base that supports community life.
Gwendolyn Hallsmith of GCI and Dick Ebersohn from the City of Calgary in Alberta, Canada are the two trainers, with David Bambata from SALGA as the lead organiser, with assistance from Sylvia Maluleke. Hallsmith has written two workbooks for community leaders to use - Taking Action from Sustainability: The EarthCAT Guide to Community Development, which is a Guidebook to implementing the Earth Charter on the local level, and Local Action for Sustainable Economic Renewal (LASER), which applies the same principles to local economic development.
The workbooks and the presentations amde at the training sessions are available at no charge from the GCI web sites listed below. The EarthCAT and LASER sites also provide community leaders with management support software they can use to implement sustainable development planning projects.
www.global-community.org/
http://www.earthcat.org/
http://www.global-laser.org/
Subjects covered in the training include:
- Community Development for the 21st century
- Creating Excitement and Momentum for Community Development Planning
- Asset Inventory and Capacity Assessment
- Introduction to Systems Thinking
- Planning and implementation
- Encouraging Entrepreneurs
- The Creative Economy
- Sustainable Economic Development Planning
- Leadership and Facilitation Skills for Multi-Stakeholders Processes, and
- Project Implementation
The reaction to the training has been very enthusiatic. "This really helped me understand my job better," one trainee offered. "I learnt how to focus on building on the strengths of the community, rather than always focusing on the problems." Over two hundred local officials have participated, and their requests for more in-depth follow up training led SALGA and GCI to prepare a video of the training, so people who were unable to attend will be able to see it. For more information about how to get the video contact david Bambata at dbambata@salga.org.za |
