Phnom Penh, March 26 – 27, 2015: A two-day in house training on “Understanding on Policy and Regulation Formulation and Advocacy” was provided to The NGO Forum on Cambodia (NGOF) employees at Le Paranda Hotel.
The main objectives of the workshop were to improve the participants’ understanding on policy and regulations and their formulation processes for more effective advocacy in Cambodia. It was expected that the output would increase the effectiveness of NGOF in discussing issues and advocating policy options to policy actors.
“These are very useful lessons, as through this c session, we are manage to understand and more about the policy making process’ in different sectors, including the government. This knowledge will help improve our work, which is mainly on the policy monitoring, by saving us time, and being able to connect to the right person at the right time,” said Sin Sokhmony, Agriculture Policies Monitoring Project Coordinator of NGO after the workshop.
After the training, the majority of the participants were able to gain knowledge about a range of topics. In addition they learnt about “the complexity of policy processes” and “policy analysis” as well as many other important issues, according to the pre and post self-evaluation result.
NGOF’s Resettlement and Housing Rights Project Coordinator, Leng Sarorn, stated that the workshop session gave him the ability to understand the policy making process and improved his capacity to analyze policy.
“I would say I have learned more than just theory in this workshop. Besides a better understanding of the policy making process, we have learned to analyze policy and negotiation. For example, to understand and study the content of the policy if it’s fits with the current country situation, or how should we talk to the policy maker and be able to convince then to consider our feedback,” he said.
The workshop materials were adapted from renowned policy study institutions and scholars. The consultant to deliver the workshop drew a lot from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and other sources derived by Dr. Tat Puthsodary, together with Consultant’s inputs from his own experience the field of policy oriented research and policy formulation in the past 20 years.