TRAIN TO LA21 - Online training materials for local regional development.

www.traintola21.org

The TRAIN to LA21 project idea was shaped during the TENVORS meeting and workshop in Cork, in October 2002, and immediately gathered the interest of several TENVORS partners and other participants in the workshop who realized the need for innovative training material to promote the implementation of LA21.

The Project

Over a period of 36 months, project partners from six different EU countries have been working on developing a pallet of training materials to help regions and municipalities in the implementation of the Local Agenda 21 process. The project started with a research phase which used TENVORS's own Regional Analysis and Comparison Tool (ReAct) as a basis for identifying learning requirements pertaining to the implementation of a LA21 process within regions. Working in cooperation with national advisory groups from regions throughout Europe where Local Agenda 21 is already prevalent or in the process of implementation the project identified a series of skills and competences required for the implementation of a Local Agenda 21 process. Three target groups were identified as being instrumental in the process:

1. Politicians - elected politicians acting at the local or regional levels, responsible for, or in any way, involved in decision making regarding a LA21 process.
2. Technical staff – Technicians, primarily working as civil servants in municipalities and regional agencies, directly involved in LA21 implementation. This category may include other professional facilitators who need technical know-how to support LA21 processes.
3. Other facilitators (country specific) – Non-professional groups in any way active in LA21 implementation, for example NGO´s, interested groups, active citizens.

Learning by example

Throughout the project the core partners were given insights into numerous factors which contribute to successful Local agenda 21 processes in different regions: Excursions, exhibitions, detailed discussions with local actors, guest lectures, conferences and in-depth research all gave the so-called experts a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of concepts like "public participation" and "municipal development" within the broad scope of Local Agenda 21. Correspondingly the resultant training material would have to include a wide range of illustrative examples as well as practical exercises.

The training materials - OP3

After everything had been distilled the resulting pallet of training materials consists of four intermeshed modules available online supported by a host of extra resources relevant to the field of Local Agenda 21. The four modules cover the following topics: Overview, People, Process and Projects. All material has been translated and is available in all the partner country languages (Basque, Danish, English, German, Portuguese, Slovenian and Spanish).

All four modules have been illustrated with diagrams, tables, maps, colour plates and a multitude of everyday practical case studies and real-life examples of Local Agenda 21 implementation in the various partner regions.

All the modules feature embedded external reading suggestions indicated by intuitive icons at relevant positions in the text. In order to reduce the information overload, all these icons take the user to the Train to LA21 "Resources Centre" - a special feature where the resources are sorted and commented by the editing team.

Complementing the online OP3 modules, Train to LA21 provides a fully interactive set of Power Point presentations for users who are trainers themselves to download in their own language and use further. As well as a navigational bar, these presentations include note pages with a series of useful didactic hints, theoretical and practical exercises.

Naturally more details about the OP3 training materials can be found in the Virtual Market place or by visiting the Train to LA21 website.