ITP – Democratic Institutions and Participative Democracy

The International Training Programmes (ITP) was primarily directed to middle level managers in governmental institutions and active representatives from civil society organizations in Latin-America. The programmes ran twice per year, with a total of 9 programmes. Initially, the ITPs were directed towards countries in South America and during the course of implementation they also targeted countries in Central America. The programmes were conducted in Spanish

The main objective of the programmes was to give the participants a general understanding of the democratic processes in Sweden and Latin America. The participants were supported in carrying out a change project of their own. The change project had to be anchored in the participant’s home institution. Another objective was to provide an arena for participants to facilitate contacts and exchange of experiences.

The programme's methodology blended the participants' own experiences with Swedish and international best practices while emphasising a participatory approach. The structure of the programme was divided into five phases where the second and fourth phases consisted of scheduled training in Sweden as well as the participants' home region, while the intermediate and concluding phases focused on support and coaching on participants' own change projects. During the scheduled training phase in Sweden the participants had a four module programme:

1. Project Cycle Management – Methodology for working in projects,
2. Democracy in Sweden – The encounter between the civil society and the public sector,
3. Principles and Methods of Democracy, and
4. Participatory Democracy

These modules included coaching of the participants own project for change, teambuilding, gender, conflict management, participatory methods, study visits and network opportunities for the participants.

During the fourth phase of the programme, the scheduled regional follow up, the participants visited interesting and relevant institutions/organisations and worked further with their project for change. In this phase SIPU also invited other participants, managers, embassies and relevant actors to enable participants to establish networks for future contacts.