The Liberal Academy

I | About Every liberal member, especially a young one has a need for improving political skills, as well as a need for personal development. Every young liberal should take advantage of the opportunity to gain extra knowledge, that would make their work, both within the party and outside the party easier. Additional education, will not only make our party's members more successful in performing in their activity, but will lead to a long term competitive advantage for our party as a whole. The Liberal Youth Organization must permanently be aware of this opportunity, therefore support and develop long term projects focused on increasing the quality of education among its members. Thus by acknowledging the importance of supporting the liberal youth to focus on their educational and professional objectives, we have developed an integrated project within our ordinary political activities called “The Liberal Academy”. The Liberal Academy will function as an internal learning center. Project details Initiators: The Liberal Youth Organzation Partners: Friedrich Naumann Foundation; National Democratic Institute Project duration: May 2009 – April 2011

II | What we want Mission: The priority of the Liberal Academy is to educate young liberals, to increase their political and administrative competencies. The task of the Academy is the transfer of knowledge among local organizations. Target: Young members of local organizations (with no political experience, who just joined the political activity). Young, newly elected officials and future potential candidates in local administration: city councils, municipal councils, county councils, mayors. Specific objectives: Plan a series of trainings for the young members of National Liberal Youth based on concepts of general politics, such as: the basis of liberalism and liberal principles. Plan a series of in-depth seminars and trainings to educate young elected officials and future potential candidates of the National Liberal Youth in local administration. Form a team of internal trainers, meaning a team of highly skilled and performing young people of our organization who successfully attended the seminars, were supervised and prepared by professional trainers of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and National Democratic Institute. This internal team will be used to provide the further planned training sessions in general politics.

III | The Concept As mentioned, the Liberal Academy will function as an internal educational center within the party's youth organization. The activities of the educational center will be planned as integrated activities in the ordinary activity of the National Liberal Youth, without involving great financial efforts, just a good planning and cooperation between local and regional youth organizations. The Liberal Academy is a project focused on 3 dimensions: the training activity, the development of a web portal ( and finally the formation of team of internal trainers. The training activity The National Liberal Youth has a monthly meeting of the National Permanent Bureau, which is the coordinating bureau of the organization's activity. Each of this meetings is being held in a different county each month, generally during weekends. The training sessions of the Liberal Academy will take place in the same time and at the same place with these meetings, due to a series of advantages, such as: The calendar of these meetings is planned for a whole year in advance, providing as well an opportunity for a better planning the training activity of the Academy all around the country. During the weekend there will be 2 training sessions: basis and principles of liberalism (the first day) and local administration (the second day).

Each month the meeting, and the training sessions will be held in a different county from a different development region of Romania. There are 8 development regions, each having an average of 4-5 counties. 5 young people coming from the youth organizations in the development region where the meeting is being held will attend the seminar focused on basis and principles of liberalism. Other 5 locally elected young liberals or potential candidates will attend the seminar focused on local administration. After 8 months, all the development regions will be covered and the training activity will be continued either by a second module of the training, for in-depth education with the same participants or by the same training module but with new participants from the counties in the development region where the seminar is being held at the moment (this way more young people will have access to education). III | The Concept

The advantage of having the training sessions held together with The Meetings of The National Youth Permanent Bureau is that we have all the infrastructure of a seminar (meeting room, laptops, video projector, etc) and that it is easier for the participants of local organizations to attend a day of training held somewhere in their development region, closer to their home cities. As mentioned, there will be 2 types of training sessions: Basis of liberalism and liberal principles, training held by a professional trainer provided by the Naumann Foundation, targeted on our young members, who need to be aware of concepts of general liberal politics in order to develop themselves as future potential politicians. Seminar and trainings in local administration to educate young elected officials and future potential candidates of the National Liberal Youth. Young politicians will be tough by a professional trainer provided by the National Democratic Institute in areas like: local legislation, urban planning, budgeting, municipal/city/district/subdistrict council procedures, proposals of local development projects, communication with the public and media. III | The Concept

The web portal The web portal (www. academialiberala.ro) will be an on line network for young liberals providing different facilities for their development, such as: It will be a on line book store, containing new information relevant to them, on line further reading on a topic related to liberalism and local administration, links, books, studies in the area. It will be an on line learning center making available all course supports for those attending courses, giving access for all members to upload documents. Those who cannot attend the training session, can use virtual learning, by receiving on line courses, and having a tutor to communicate with by . All students attending seminars (either virtual or in the development region) will have assignments and paperworks that will be uploaded on the web-site and will be available to every member of the virtual community for further reading and consultation. The creation of the on line learning center is a step forward in the educational process of our members due to the fact that will increase the number of targets reached and it cut the costs of organizing seminars. III | The Concept

will assure a better communication between the members of local organization,it will create a linkage between them. Members will have to upload their CV and all other will have access to it, leading to a better awareness of the organization and its members. Internal team of trainers The outcome of this long term intense training activity should be the formation of a highly prepared team of young internal trainers, highly skilled and professional young liberals, who firstly attended the seminars and due to an intensive learning and assignments well prepared were certified as internal trainers. This team will result in a huge advantage for our organization, being able to focus on educational process using internal human resource with no financial costs

IV | The Budget