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LSG DEVELOPMENT: Flagship project finalizes activities and summs up results

The project «Supporting the local self-government development to improve the quality of life in rural areas» (LSG Development) was implemented in order to achieve the goal of improvement of the quality of life in rural areas of the target regions (Shugozero municipality in Russia and Gulbene municipality in Latvia) and had 4 specific objectives:
1. To increase involvement of rural communities into the regional development processes through social dialog.
2. To improve institutional conditions for local self-government system development in rural areas.
3. To arise capacity of rural local self-governments.
4. To develop sustainable cooperation between Latvian and Russian parties.

To fulfill the objectives and achieve the goal implementation of the Project required:

1. Collecting information through public opinion polls, focus groups, public hearings, desk-studies. Surveys were carried out in Shugozero and Gulbene municipality in the beginning and by the end of the project. These activities involved about 1000 people (altogether in both municipalities) and provided evidence base for further researches within the project.

 

2. Training sessions for rural elders and representatives of municipal authorities.  In Russia theme of the trainings covered issues of rural tourism, consumer cooperation, farming, safety, protection of population in emergencies. In Latvia the trainings were focused on principles of effective governing, quality of municipal services, dissemination of best practice of municipal administration and process of administrative and territorial reform in Latvia.

3. Dissemination events, such as:
- Forum on local self-government in August 2013. 20 representatives of Latvian municipalities visited St.Petersburg and remote rural settlement and shared the ideas of development of rural areas.


 

   

- Study tour to Latvia in December 2013 and conference on best practices of municipal governance. Rural elders and representatives of Leningrad Region municipalities got to know EU and Latvian approach to tackling similar problems. Russian delegation visited Riga and Gulbene, where the conference and experience sharing activity were carried out.
- Final conference of the project in May 2014. It gathered Latvian and Russian  representatives of municipalities, as well as rural elders and representatives of regional authorities of the Leningrad Region. During the conference all target groups of the project presented their achievements and evaluated the impact of the Action. In the end of the Conference 8 Cooperation agreements were signed between Leningrad Region and Latvian municipalities.

     

4. Emergency alert system was installed in Shugozero settlement. It includes system of automatic connection with the rural elders in case of emergency (computer is installed in local Administration), loudspeakers, mobile phones for every rural elder and informational stands in every village of Shugozero settlement.

   

5. Publications of studies conducted by the experts of the project became a significant outcome as they formed methodical basis for further development of local self-government in a new format, settling legislational, organizational, practical framework for activity of rural elders at municipal level. In Russia deliverables of the project were disseminated in all regions of Russian Federation as best practice example.

               

Results

- Rural elders as well as representatives of local administrations are capacitated in municipal governing. Practitioners, civil servants, scientists delivered comprehensive training programmes (4 modules of trainings in Gulbene municipality and Shugozero municipality as pilot sites).
- Horizontal connections in cross-border cooperation between Russia and Latvia were enhanced by signing the Cooperation Agreements between 8 Latvian and 8 Russian municipalities.
- Methodical basis for development of local self-government system with rural elders as the key actors was developed. Desk studies, public opinion polls, focus groups provided evidence based grounds for developing concept of development of rural elders system as well as recommendations on improving legal framework of governing rural territories.  Deliverables at Russian side of the project according the assignment of the President of the Russian Federation were disseminated to all the regions of the Russian Federation as the best practice example.
- Rural elders were equipped with the system of alerting in emergency situation that increased safety level of living in rural area.



       

Information is prepared by the Project.

Full text of Final Info-Letter of the Project.

Web page of the Project.


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