The NGO Leadership Workshop is an innovative program designed to strengthen civil society in young democracies by providing management training to non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The workshop is offered in partnership by the Weiser Center for Europe & Eurasia (WCEE) and William Davidson Institute (WDI) at the University of Michigan.
WCEE and WDI have offered 11 workshops since 2015. The first four workshops were held annually and targeted participants from across Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Central Asia and the Caucasus. In 2019, the organizers introduced a new model with two workshops per year—one in Bratislava, Slovakia with partner organization Ambrela (and later Hekima) that is designed to meet the needs of participants from Visegrad-4 countries and the other in Warsaw, Poland with partner organization Education for Democracy Foundation (FED) targeting NGO leaders from countries east of Poland. The COVID-19 pandemic then forced a pivot in programming—read more about how we adjusted over this time. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, we adjusted our focus again and offered a workshop in Warsaw in October 2022 for regional NGO leaders assisting Ukrainian refugees. In September 2023, we hosted a workshop in Lublin, Poland—located less than 75 miles from the Ukrainian border—exclusively for Ukrainian civil society leaders.
The video below highlights the Fall 2019 workshop.
For more information, please contact WCEE at weisercenter@umich.edu.
