Official Opening of the Zambia TtF, 11 - 22 November 2013- BRIDGE Training supported by SADC -ESN and other international partners

Official Opening of the Zambia TtF, 11 - 22 November http://pev-sadc.eu/images/ZAM_IMG_1436.jpg ZAM IMG 1436 The Zambia training was officially announced opened on the morning of 11 November 2013 following the speeches of the European Centre for Electoral Support's representative, the Zambia National Women's Lobby, the Foundation for Democratic Process, the Electoral Commission of Zambia, the facilitators, Zage Filipovski from OSCE Macedonia and Rindai Chipfunde-Vava from ZESN, also chair person of the SADC ESN and finally, the Ministry of Home Affairs in Zambia. Local media covered the opening and took the opportunity to interview the organiser's and facilitators during the morning event. The BRIDGE work shop was met with a lot of positivity and welcomed as particularly appropriate in time. After the first tea-break, the facilitators started to introduce the participants to the BRIDGE curriculum. Several interactive and lighter exercises followed, where participants had to formulate their expectations, describe what a good facilitator would be like and start to think about how to get into the role themselves. Despite being a heterogenous group, participants quickly interacted with each other and established a constructive and positive working environment. Starting tomorrow, a participant from Zambian media will tweet from the training using the PEV SADC projects hash tag. Follow the training on facebook and twitter, where we will also explore the promises and pitfalls of social media when it comes to predicting, mitigating and preventing electoral violence #PEVSADC