Deadline: 14-May-21
The Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) has invited applications from eligible organisations for its Training for Media and CSOs programme to work on the issues of transparency and accountability in Montenegro.
WFD’s initiatives includes helping protect women from violence in the Middle East, making politics more inclusive in Africa, consolidating democratic institutions in Asia and building trust in democracy across the Western Balkans. WFD currently operates in 38 countries.
WFD Montenegro is looking for a company/organization to, in close co-operation with WFD, prepare and deliver a training programme for media and CSOs on public finances and understanding of State Audit Institution reports.
WFD Office in Montenegro, within its project “Transparency and Accountability of political practices”, aims to support the State Audit Institution (SAI) in improving the overall communication. This includes presentation of their reports, summarizing reports, using easy to read visuals, and improve their communication skills and communication with parliament, CSO and media.
Objectives
- With the goal of enhancing the awareness and dialogue on the need for transparent public spending, WFD would like to engage with representatives of the media and civil sector and support them in deepening their understanding of public finances, of SAI’s work, at the same time strengthening the links between the institutions and civil society.
- Through a competitive process, journalists would be invited to apply for grants for writing research stories based on SAI reports. Selected journalists will go through a training programme which will enable them the better understanding of SAI reports and will be expected to publish stories focusing on public spending. Similar programme would be organized for interested NGOs, enabling them to raise public dialogue on relevant findings from SAI reports.
- Part of the programme would be the also the development of a toolkit for media/CSOs on how to read financial reports, how to analyze complex data etc. For this purpose WFD will engage a non-governmental organization/company to provide training for media and civil sector
Focus Areas
The regional programme titled: “Western Balkans Democracy Initiative” focused on three components of work:
- Strengthening Political Parties
- Strengthening Parliamentary Practice
- Strengthening Democratic Institutions and Culture
Deliverables
The selected company/organisation is expected to, in close co-operation and co-ordination with WFD, prepare and deliver:
- Publish an open call with established criteria, and jointly with WFD select participants and candidates for receiving grants for investigative stories;
- Training programme for media representatives with a plan, annotated agendas, list of experts and proposed dates;
- Training programme for CSO representatives with a plan, annotated agendas, list of experts and proposed dates;
- Reports on the delivered training programmes for the media and CSOs;
- Toolkit for media and CSOs to help them deepen their understanding of SAI’s reports and enable them to use the main findings in their daily work.
- Publishing of the investigative stories.
Requirements
The selected company/organization is expected to:
- Provide a detailed plan for training programme that would deepen media’s understanding of public finances and SAI’s work and reporting;
- Provide a detailed plan for training programme that would deepen CSO’s understanding of public finances and SAI’s work and reporting;
- Launching the competitive process for investigative stories;
- Take active part in establishing the commission and criteria for selection of journalistic stories;
- Implement training programme for media and CSO;
- Provide mentorship and guidance to journalist while developing and publishing investigative stories;
- Develop a toolkit that would help the media/CSO in their daily work on how to read financial reports, better understand budget cycles, public procurement processes, audit reports etc.
For more information, visit https://www.wfd.org/2021/04/27/call-for-applications-wfd-montenegro/