Consistent with the initiative’s overall aim of increasing and improving contacts between Romani communities and local authorities, capacity-building measures constitute a major focus of project activities. In order to transfer necessary knowledge and skills as quickly as possible for application in the Romani coordinators’ and sector heads’ execution of daily tasks, the training events of the first project year have been concentrated in the first half of the project year.

ECMI has encouraged coordination between local Romani coordinators and sector heads in their respective municipalities by administering a set of training sessions to both groups simultaneously. The themes of these common training sessions were:

• Human and minority rights (including the rights of women);
• The Decade of Roma Inclusion and the National Action Plans;
• Project design and fundraising; and
• Project management

Beyond the formal training sessions, events specifically dedicated to networking among the local Romani coordinators have been designed to allow the coordinators’ to learn from one another’s experiences.

Links to descriptions of individual training and networking events are given in chronological order below: