PROFESSIONAL WORK EXCHANGE FOR ENHANCED POLICY DIALOGUE PROGRAM

The Professional Work Exchange for Enhanced Policy Dialogue Program is a series of cross-border policy work exchanges of mid-career professionals from a targeted group of think tanks, CSOs, and universities in Kosovo and in Serbia. The aim of these work exchanges is to enhance the human resources and knowledge products of host organizations and facilitate the production of multi-perspective policy work in the field of government accountability and transparency, human rights protection, independent media, security and justice, and migration policies.

The workshop on the Professional Work Exchange took place in Prishtina on 7 and 8 February 2014. The workshop was participated by KCSS Researcher, Sofije Kryeziu and around 15 other CSO representatives who were nominated to participate in the Programme. Ms. Kryeziu will be joining the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy (BCSP) for a period of one month, whereas two of the BCSP researchers will come to KCSS for a period of two weeks. Both of the exchange research teams will be working on the minority inclusion in the security sector in Serbia, respectively Kosovo.

The workshop participated also mentors who are going to supervise the exchange researchers. The aim of this workshop was to prepare participants for one month exchange of professionals between organizations taking part in the programme. During these two days of workshops participant were able to hear presentations from at least 8 speakers. One of the speakers was also the KCSS Secretary/Senor Researcher Mentor Vrajolli who brought to the audience his experiences on the Best Practices in Cross-Border Professional Exchanges. Furthermore, the groupings of exchange participants with both the hosting and sending organizations discussed substantially the terms of the exchange as well as ways that both the hosting and sending organizations can utilize the exchange to deepen or broaden that collaboration between their organizations.

The project is run by The Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD) and the main donor is Foreign and Commonwealth Office.