Rhineland-Palatinate/Rwanda, 2020. Reciprocal visits between the partners are the pivotal element of the Local Governance Exchange programme. Face-to-face dialogue enables the participants to understand the local context in their partner municipality, and fosters mutual learning. Normally the participating partnerships conduct two or three such expert missions per year. Yet last year – 2020, during which the corona pandemic changed so much – called for alternatives. In municipalities in Rwanda and Rhineland-Palatinate alike, Covid-19 severely constrained the partnerships' human capacities for joint work.
Partnerships embark on virtual dialogue
Although travel would still have been possible, the increased workloads among local authority staff would have made it almost impossible to continue working together as before. 'The pandemic meant we all needed to take a very close look at video conferencing and develop our skills for using these systems', says Bernhard Eck of the EWL waste management and disposal company in Landau. Over the last few months, this municipally-owned enterprise has been advising its partner district of Ruhango online on preparing a feasibility study on rainwater management. Although these digital formats certainly cannot replace the face-to-face communication that had so far taken place during the visits, district staff member Christine Mutezimana from Ruhango believes that they should also continue to be used after the pandemic to complement the expert missions.
Between June and December a total of twelve virtual meetings took place within the five municipal partnerships currently taking part in the programme. These meetings were used not only for working-level dialogue, but also to conduct mini-workshops on various aspects of planning projects in partnership, such as project fund-raising.
Intercultural project management for staff of Rwandan districts
In November ten staff members from the districts of Karongi, Ngoma, Gisagara, Ruhango and Nyamagabe took advantage of an online training course which the Service Agency Communities in One World had organised together with the Ministry of the Interior and for Sports Rhineland-Palatinate. The three-day series of seminars familiarised the district staff with tools and instruments that they can use for planning projects, especially when working together in partnership with municipalities from Rhineland-Palatinate. The workshop participants also learned more about the local governance system in Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as various concepts and dimensions of culture. During an interactive block they reflected on different value systems, thus extending their intercultural awareness. The course was rounded off with a unit on joint project management in municipal partnerships. The unit focused on communication, organisation and dealing with potential conflicts in intercultural teams.
Also in November a virtual network meeting was held for the actors from Rhineland-Palatinate. Participants were updated with news from the Rwanda/Rhineland-Palatinate partnership in general, and from the Local Governance Exchange programme in particular. They compared notes on the topics currently being addressed in the individual partnerships, and reflected in small groups on the prospects for future cooperation.
Everyone showed themselves to be motivated to drive cooperation in the partnerships forward in the coming year – in the hope that expert missions too will once again be doable as soon as possible.
