Capacity building in the EDA

 By Fesseha Nair

The EDA Executive office has recently sent a circular to all members and supporters of the EDA unity conference held in Addis in the month of May 2008.  The Executive office has adopted a new strategy, initiating a transformation of the organizational operations in several ways. It has laid down a one year work program aimed building capacity of the organization and introduced new approaches. These new approaches are working in teams in every office of the Executive;  and integrating the activities of the civil and individual in cooperation with the members of the EDA world wide. Thus team work and integrated approach to develop human and capital resources to achieve the objectives of the EDA in its struggle against the dictator in Eritrea. The structure and operation of the four departments of the EDA:

-         The information Department

-         The foreign affairs Department

-         The Social and public Affairs Department

-         The Economic and financial Department

The EDA departments and the new mode of team working is a modern way of working to be owned that promotes formulation of policies, programmes , projects, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The catchwords of the EDA are ownership and capacity building at this time. The team work in each department gives one relevant illustrative example in this respect. The recent guidelines released by the EDA executive to affirm that the struggle from the dictator to the democratic transition is under the Eritrean peoples’ ownership rather than foreign dependency so that they have sent their public notices that without their participation the struggle of the people will never succeed over the tyranny in Eritrea and bring sustainable peace and stability in the country. Participation and dialogue between civil society organizations, international funding and technical assistance agencies are needed to achieve this. With this principle in mind, the EDA member organizations in Sweden have started  in joint cooperation with the civil society organizations EDA capacity building activities. The joint activities of the civil and political organizations in Sweden has been a learning institution. The main concept behind this was that  a number of activities preceding the EDA unification conference have served as a basis for promoting the EDA’s activities in Sweden.

The joint activities of the civil and political organizations in Sweden will develop and strengthen and promote favourable policy environment by lobbying key decision makers/ parties/ parliament and the government officials in Sweden.

The civil and political organizations in Sweden will always apply dialogue as their only method to work successfully in the future. The future is not without challenges and obstacles but, the learning institution comprising the civil and political organization will holding together to overcome the tyranny and build democratic society in Eritrea.

The EDA Executive calls to organize workshops to promote capacity building and make aware the people to join the struggle for democratic change is very crucial and need commitment by all actors for democratic change in Eritrea.