UNDP Bratislava Regional Centre (UNDP BRC, the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative (LGPSRI) jointly, with the support of the UNDP Macedonia Country Office, organized an Inter-Municipal Cooperation (IMC) Training and Quality Assurance Workshop for Trainers. The workshop was held in Skopje on 17-19 June 2009 at Hotel Holiday Inn.

This workshop was a follow up to two workshops on IMC that were jointly implemented by the three organizations in Peccioli (Italy) in June 2008 and in Bratislava (Slovakia) in October 2009. The participants in these workshops agreed that awareness and capacities about IMC in their countries must be raised.

The objective of the workshop was to train practitioners and trainers from the region on IMC by introducing them to the draft Toolkit and testing with them the exercises of the training programme. The workshop gathered all the authors of the Toolkit (Professor Robert Hertzog from Strasbourg University, Professor Pawel Swianiewicz from Warsaw University, and Professor Ken Davey from Birmingham University) as well as John Jackson, the author of the training programme.

UNDP BRC, CoE and LGPSRI have prepared a draft Toolkit on IMC and a related training programme which can be adapted to specific country circumstances and used to deliver targeted training activities. Upon finalization of the IMC Toolkit, it will be available for all stakeholders from the region.