In 2014, IFES began development on the first Disability Rights and Elections training module. The module’s content is informed by the standards identified in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The module development has been a collaborative effort across multiple regions, with testing in Haiti, Egypt, Nepal and Myanmar. Lessons learned from these pilots have been incorporated into a penultimate version of the module which was implemented at the pilot BRIDGE training module on disability rights on January 29, 2015 and the BRIDGE training itself involving 17 participants from EMBs across ASEAN countries on January 30, 2015.
BRIDGE Training is a training program which needs to be tailored made to the context where it’s being delivered. It actually makes it very good since it looks at the context and creates the content around the context. BRIDGE is a module for professional development program with particular focus on election. BRIDGE curriculum is delivered through face to face workshop using the adult learning principle by accredited facilitators.
The beauty of this training, of course people come away with new knowledge and skill but it’s for them to work together like government, EMBs, and DPOs. This ultimately led to so productive joint efforts in developing strategic plan and idea to improve access in a collaborative manner — which actually is the focus of the conference, collaboration.
Another feature of the BRIDGE module and method is that participant’s expertise and understanding is very important. In BRIDGE, everybody is an expert, everybody has knowledge and wisdom. The purpose of the program is to try to bring out and share them with others. What this program does is to expose those things so people can talk about their value and how they behave as decision makers.
Video go to here.