From September 22-23, SCSI hosted a training in Beijing to enhance the communication capacity for the Secretariat of the Greater Tumen Initiative (GTI). Participants that attended the workshop included GTI Secretariat staff, as well as representatives of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Russian Federation’s Trade Mission. As successful regional economic cooperation within the Greater Tumen Region depends on effective communication between national focal points and the GTI Secretariat, SCSI invited a trainer to mentor the workshop and to present participants with a broad range of communication tools. After assessing the challenges of communications among the GTI Secretariat, the National Coordinators and other stakeholders, the participants actively engaged in elaborating new concepts to take effective measures towards building communication capacity.
From September 26-27, a training on proposal writing for Mongolian GTI Focal Points followed in Ulaanbaatar. Based on the positive feedback from a similar training last year this event brought together participants from many of the ministries and government agencies involved in GTI cooperation such as the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Development Bank of Mongolia as well as representatives of provincial governments. Through sessions on proposal writing as such and input on the particularities of guidelines and regulations of proposing projects within the GTI framework provided by officer Mr. Batkhuyag Baldangombo from the GTI Secretariat, the training provided the opportunity for the participants to exchange information about Mongolia’s engagement in the GTI Framework and strengthen their committment to the GTI mechanism.