Julian Dierkes // Jan 13, 2015
The Spring 2015 project will be the first time that we’ll be continuing an Asia Pacific Policy Project from a previous (academic) year and I’m very curious to see whether that will make a difference to how the project unfolds.
In Spring 2014 the project initially familiarized itself with EITI reconciliation reports to then delve deeper into how these reports could be communicated in a different/additional way to receive more attention in civil society and in Mongolia overall. One of the great successes of this project were the three presentations students gave in Ulaanbaatar in early June to the Ministry of Mining, to NGOs (facilitated and hosted by the EITI Secretariat) and to the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. These presentations showcased the project to Mongolian audiences and will allow us to build on a familiarity with our Project in the current iteration.
While we’re still waiting on a decision about some funding for the Project that will allow participants to travel to Mongolia and thus engage stakeholders even more directly, the fact that some connections around the topic of the EITI in Mongolia have been established already will likely make a big difference this Spring. It also raised the expectations, internally as well as externally.
As we’re focusing on structures and initiatives to create local engagement with the EITI as well as support for reporting at the local level, we are taking the Project in a somewhat different direction. Local-level reporting is new to EITI reporting in Mongolia and elsewhere, so we may find that we’ll have fewer international examples of activities to draw on than we did last year in a focus on communications. But, that means that there is significant room for students’ creativity in imagining or recommending solutions and initiatives.