2024-03-26 01:53:58
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A workshop to design electoral civic education tools started this Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in the prefecture of Kindia. Objective: design innovative and effective educational tools that will be used by CSOs to inform and educate citizens on the issues and responsibilities related to the civic and electoral participation of young people, women and marginalized people.
It is in view of the preparations for the next citizen awareness campaigns for their inclusive and peaceful participation in the electoral events that the NDI organized this workshop to design electoral civic education tools which will be used to inform citizens about democratic principles. and political and electoral processes, explained Paul Emmanuel Bakayoko, program director at NDI.
“This training is part of a project which aims to create the conditions for a peaceful electoral political process. We work with civil society organizations to prepare citizens to truly engage in this process. So, we are working on issues of electoral civic education. And, already, two weeks ago, we had to organize a workshop to collect the needs and priorities of the populations through these CSOs on the issues of electoral civic education and today we are in the process of train these civil society organizations to design electoral civic education tools that they themselves will use on the ground to raise awareness among Guinean citizens of the need for people such as young people, women and marginalized people to get involved in the process,” he explains.
This workshop for designing methodological tools for electoral civic education is implemented by the NDI with funding from USAID. It is held in the presence of 37 actors from civil society. The resident director of the NDI discusses the contribution of the NDI in this process.
“The contribution of the NDI is essential because the NDI has many different types of programs and we also have different experts on electoral civic education but also approaches to the transition process. This is really STEP’s project with the IFES consortium, we launched this program in December 2022 and we will continue to support all CSOs to manage these fairly essential civic education campaigns that we have already shared in the workshop for local CSOs to manage these forms, to inform citizens, to properly manage the elections that will come in the future,” said Randa Farhat.
Present at this workshop, Alpha Issiaga Diallo, deputy national director of political affairs and electoral administration, thanked the partners after giving the importance of this training as part of the electoral process.
“We are at this very important workshop that the NDI is organizing as part of the support of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization through the National Directorate of Political Affairs and Electoral Administration. Awareness or electoral civic education is of great importance because the success of an election is mainly based on two major elements: that of participation and also acceptance of the results. So good electoral civic education allows us after the proclamation of the results of an election and that there is peace, that is the objective. Participation also when an election is organized and participation is low, very often this election is qualified as an unsuccessful election. So, this is why we thank the technical and financial partners who support us in this area, in particular NDI which has just organized this workshop for civil society organizations which have their hands in the dough in the context of the awareness, education and in the context of information,” he adds.
At the end of this workshop, tools such as the guide or image boxes will be designed allowing participants (CSOs) to go into the field to raise awareness and inform populations about the entire process in local languages. The workshop will end on March 21.
Aboubacar Dramé, regional correspondent at Kindia
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