In December 2007, was successfully concluded the Democracy and Governance program, where Partners Albania - Center for Change and Conflict Management was part of the implementing consortium together with NDI and IREX. In the framework of this program, P-A aimed to strengthen the Albanian civil society organizations through a diverse program of training, technical assistance, and small grants.

DGA Training Program
The Training Program was designed to enable Non-Profit Organizations to participate effectively in good governance, advocacy and anti-corruption initiatives.

PA delivered over 80 training programs, in the following topics: Advocacy, Conflict Management, Participatory Governance, Role of Civil Society in Fighting Corruption, Coalition Building, Cooperative Planning, Lobbying, and Facilitation of Participatory Processes.

A total number of 662 beneficiaries, representatives from non-for-profit organizations, local government officials, business representatives, media and other non-governmental and governmental institutions received trainings and technical assistance. Due to a proportional geographical distribution of the participants 20% of participants represent north of Albania, 18% south, 25% Tirana and 37% center Albania. Aiming to define the size the gender distribution 40% of program beneficiaries are male and 60% represent females.

NPOs involved in the training program are working in the following fields: social services, women, youth, human rights, civil education, democracy, promotion of art, culture and sport and environment.

Some Key Results from the Training Program

• Around 25 organizations participant in Advocacy and Lobbying Training programs are running advocacy initiatives mostly focused on efforts to increase government transparency and public participation in decision-making, community mobilization etc. 
• Around 61% of the trained NPOs in Networking and Coalition Building Training have worked in coalitions after-the training period. The issues that most have brought NPOs together are: promoting community and proposing/ lobbying for legal changes.
• Over 66% of trained NPOs in Participatory Governance and Public Participation Techniques have been actively involved in the municipality city council meetings, monitoring efforts etc. 
• Local NPOs and active citizens in seven municipalities of Gjirokastra, Korca, Pogradec, Durres, Fier, Vlora, Shkodra were involved with the “I Support Good Governance” initiative, influencing the candidate mayors’ agendas during the pre-election period in 2007. Local target groups in the seven cities are actually monitoring how the mayors’ promises on different issues are being kept. 
• 80% of the NPOs participants in Cooperative Planning Training have used Cooperative Planning Process as an effective tool in identifying and pursuing key stakeholders to be part of their efforts/initiatives. 
• Around 30% of NPOs trained in Role of Civil Society in Anticorruption Initiatives, have a significant increase in members involved in their anticorruption initiatives at local level. At least 35% of the trained NGOs are implementing different initiatives with focus on anticorruption.

Conclusions and Challenges

• The involvement of civil society organizations in advocacy and good governance in Albania is still at low levels. These are new practices in Albania’s civil society sector and capacity building still remains continuous demand by the Albanian NGOs. The outcomes of advocacy campaigns implemented in these years are not very positive and can not be considered as successful in achieving their goals.  Work experiences in coalitions reflect the need of NGOs to establish effective coalitions within NGO sector, in order to make advocacy campaigns more successful.
• The Albanian civil society in Albania has started to participate in important processes of democratic development in the country, such as electoral processes and anticorruption, but Albanian NPOs still have difficulties attracting sufficient public support and a broad enough membership base to give credibility to their anti-corruption efforts; establishing cooperation with government institutions; lobbying government institutions and establishing effective coalitions. The massive participation and geographic extension of this presence is still very poor.
• Training remains a continuous demand of by the Albanian NGOs for the enhancement of staff capacities and organization’s development in the area of democracy and good governance. Effective monitoring of government performance requires strengthening of co-operation and institutionalizing the relationship between NPOs and Government in the meaning of establishing governing structures/forums based on participation.

Grants Program
The DGA Grant Fund was designed to support free and fair elections, contribute in the fight against corruption and promote greater transparency and accountability in local and national government through financial support for Albanian NPOs.

The specific objectives of the grant program were:
1-To increase citizen participation and discussion at the national and local level on issues related to government transparency, responsiveness and accountability.

2-To enhance the effectiveness of civil society organizations in performing a watchdog, oversight and advocacy functions.

The grant program enabled the Albanian NPOs and civic organizations to increase their capacity to participate in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of public policy, including the provision of needed public services at both national and local levels. The grant program also encouraged citizens to promote their interests and present their problems to government institutions.
The program was administrated through five grant rounds.

Partners-Albania received a total of 250 project proposals presented by local organizations from which 50 were funded. Many interest groups all over the country benefited from these projects which addressed various issues such as: 
• Monitoring of parliamentary and local elections;
• Organization of public awareness campaigns to increase citizens participation in the voting process; 
• Monitoring of public expenditures usage in the pre-election period; 
• Monitoring of the financial transparency of political parties during the election campaign; 
• Improvement of legal framework and election infrastructure; 
• Increase of disabled people access in the voting stations and enable blind people to vote independently;  
• Creation of a dialogue between the local government and businesses;
• Monitoring of the government performance in local and central level, regarding provision of services, citizens’ rights and strategies.
• Enhancement of dialogue between civic groups and local government to increase citizen participation in local decision making etc.
Prior to grant award, Partners - Albania provided information and consultation through public meetings in various towns of Albania, to explain the grant criteria and project nature, and offered consultancy and individual technical assistance to about 100 NPO-s on project proposal design and development.
Partners - Albania offered training and technical assistance to grant beneficiary organizations to strengthen their advocacy and organizational capacities and assisted them toward achievement of outcomes, objectives and their supervisory and monitoring efforts for better transparent and accountable government to the public.

Some key results from the DGA Small grants program:

• Monitoring of election process of the Parliamentary Elections of July 3rd, 2005 by 2900 local observers trained by a Coalition of local NPOs. The monitoring involved 60% of voting stations and 100% of Zonal Election Commissions.
  c Monitoring of the Local Election of February 18, 2007 at 2,301 polling stations, by the Coalition of Domestic Observers consisting of eights experienced NPOs. This effort covered about 71% of voters in the 118 top most populous areas.  For the first time in Albania, election monitoring information was provided in real time through SMS messaging technology.
  c Assessment and analyses of allocations of public funds for public investments in the pre-election period by social society representatives.
• Independent voting of blind people and increase of disabled people voting as result of improvement of the election infrastructure and increased access in the voting stations.
• Creation of Korca Business Coalition Against Corruption which promoted and encouraged the dialog between business community and local institutions and helped in creation of a bribery free environment and fair competition. 
• Increase of the quality of education services by tackling the barriers to decentralization of the education system at primary and secondary level. 
• Improvement of the statutes of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Mechanical Engendering and Faculty of Agriculture regarding financial transparency and extension of student rights to participate in the budget drafting process.
• Monitoring of the city cleaning services in some pilot areas in Tirana. The recommendations made by the NPO were considered by the municipality to become part of new regulations that the municipality will apply in its contract with the cleaning firms.