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Watchdog seminar, Zielna Conference Center, Warsaw, March 11-12, 2010
We want to invite you to participate in the seminar for watchdogs that will take place in Zielna Conference Center, Warsaw on 11th and 12th March 2010.
During the event we want to take up two issues.
First is connected with the main topic of the seminar – a role of introducing social, political or legal change in watchdog activities. This is the most important stage of that type of civic control. Organizations are aware of that, but very often admit that it is a problematic sphere. For that reason, we want to make them familiar with different aspects of changing the malpractice in the public life by putting the special emphasis on specific methods and their
practical dimension.
While preparing for the seminar, we were trying to go back to our experiences from meetings with other watchdogs, especially during numerous workshops organized by ACLLG and seminars organized by Stefan Batory Foundation for those who applied for their Watchdog Initiative Program. Thanks to the previous seminars, we also had a chance to meet individuals and organizations from different European countries that undertake watchdog activities and shared with us their best practices and advises. Finally, some of us went to United States to have a closer look into the American perspective on how to make the effective change that follows watchdog initiatives.
For all that is above, we decided to focus on the new way of changing the malpractice, to influence authorities and simply to improve the life of citizens in the course of civic control.
We have invited people that are willing to share their knowledge and experiences with participants, and in our opinion they will rise issues that were not yet enough exercised in that part of Europe.
During the seminar, we will hear about methodology of creating a public spaces for the people and with the people, as the need of existence of such a place is very often diagnosed by watchdogs. We will also have a chance to get familiar with the issue of new technologies, as everyone knows about, but not many of us know how to use it in our activities. We also think, that it is worth to talk about political activities we can undertake to accomplish the goals of particular watchdog initiative – invited guests will speak on lobbing and other ways on how to influence authorities. Finally, we will look deeper into all sort of legal methods that are very important tools to introduce any sort of change.
The second issue is connected with thinking together in our watchdog
community of what future steps we should take to assure the effective development of civic control organizations. During two last seminars, we had a chance to observe what are the specific needs of individuals and institutions that undertake this new type of activities. We have tried to listen to them, now it is the time to look together what goals are standing in front of watchdog community in CEE Countries.
The seminar will consist of the deep view into theory and practice of creating a change that follow alerting and monitoring, as well as of the room for the serious discussion and look at the prospects of watchdog organizations in Poland and other CEE Countries.
The agenda of the seminar can be found on
http://www.watchdog.org.pl/
