First event within our new program – Regional Policy Academy (RPA), which we organize together with our partners from European Fund for the Balkans, took place in Bečići, Montenegro on May 14-15.
23 chosen alumni of EFB and BFPE programs, with ten of them coming from three generations of the Regional Academy for Democracy took part in this two-days event. The seminar that was moderated by Regina Joseph, lecturer at New York University, until recently a researcher at Clingendael Institute and an internationally recognized expert in the field. It was an introduction for the participants to the strategic foresight method.
The participants had the opportunity to learn about this highly complex method of forecasting the future events with the aim of applying this method to the Western Balkans through developing scenarios for future relations among the countries of the region. This scenarios should be an original contribution of the Western Balkans opinion- and decision-makers to the process of reconciliation in the region.
The idea behind RPA is to – by applying the method of strategic foresight to complex social issues – contribute to strengthening of connections between leaders of opinion and change in this region and identify and recommend concrete steps towards building societies that are more open, more inclusive, more democratic, less prone to conflict(s) and as such readier for membership and a common European perspective.
By engaging the political and civil society leaders from the WB region into a policy dialogue on the basis of the strategic foresight method, a different kind of decision makers who are committed to regional cooperation will be promoted, which will contribute to reconciliation within the WB region.
