Presentation of VARAM

Publicerad May 12, 2020

Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development Republic of Latvia

Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development activities in Coast4us project

The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development (MoEPRD) develops, implements, coordinates and evaluates regional policy at state level, provides methodological guidelines and supervises the territorial development planning process at regional and local level.

Within the Coast4us project MoEPRD has worked on creating Village Development Plan Guidelines which would include the most important stage and framework of community/village planning, to be taken into account by those people, groups, local authorities or anyone else who wants to develop their own community/village development plan.

Community development planning is one of the tools to provide involvement of civil society in development planning process at local level. Community development planning is the most important stage for implementing participatory budgeting.

The first draft of the Guidelines was prepared in April of 2019 and was discussed during the partner meeting in Salacgrīva, Latvia in May of 2019. Based on the discussions and comments the Guidelines were improved.

After discussions with project partners, in order to make the best version of the Guidelines as possible, MoEPRD in October-November of 2019 organized 4 workshops where MoEPRD presented and discussed the Guidelines with the participants of the workshop – representatives of municipalities and local activists (local action groups, NGOs etc.). During the workshops participants visited local projects, which were created by local communities. Some of the main conclusions from the workshops were that: leaders are a key element in proceeding with the development plan elaboration and implementation process; conversations are key in order to align different ideas; there is a need for change of thinking – from “me” perspective to “we” perspective.

At the moment MoEPRD is improving Guidelines based on the results of workshops. In April-May of 2020 it is planned to organize 4 practical seminars in order to test the final draft of the Guidelines and by May of 2020 it is planned to finish the Guidelines.

MoEPRD is also working on creating a practice report in order to summarize what has been done within the pilot-areas of the Coast4us project and what are the practices and lessons learned that the Coast4us project partners can share with others.