Newsletter
By Entela Pinguli, Deputy Team Leader of the EU4Municipalities grant scheme.
The EU4M program assists partner municipalities with the final report and expenditure verification preparation during the Grant’s implementation. During 2023, EU4Municipalities continued to provide training, coaching sessions and demand-driven tailored hands-on assistance to the 190 municipal officials from the 19 awarded municipalities to implement their projects. The EU4Municipalities program conducted 11 Regional trainings and 12 Coaching clinics during 2022 for the 19 Awarded Grantees as follows:
9 Regional Training sessions on Grants Management and Implementation (July 2022–February 2023), addressing the main challenges that municipalities face during implementation, specifically grant monitoring and reporting, for the benefit of 109 municipal officials.
2 Regional Training sessions on Measuring the Grants Results and Sustainability with the participation of 18 municipal officials.
12 Coaching clinics on Grant Management and Implementation providing direct tailored support on the following thematic lines: program management, financial management, reporting and communication, with the overall participation of 124 municipal officials.
To support all 61 Albanian municipalities in their fundraising capacities to absorb EU funding, there were 3 regional trainings on Lessons Learned from the EU4M Experience on “EU Project Proposal Preparation” organized in March and April 2023, jointly with the “Municipalities for Europe” Project. The training was practice-oriented and involved real-life successful examples.
Finally, EU4M is preparing for the successful closure of the project. The team is planning the last capacity-building activities of the project, and they include:
- a) the delivery of one Technical Workshop and three regional training sessions on lessons learned from the EU4M grants; b) the development of a Policy Paper on creating an enabling environment for Albanian municipalities to absorb and manage EU financial assistance; c) the development of a Manual on grant implementation (jointly with municipalities for Europe); d) the development of a Catalogue of EU-funded projects; and ultimately, e) the project’s final Conference, where we would like to see all the partners and counterparts celebrating the successful closure of the EU4M project.
