Events
The monitor training meeting was organised as planned on 10 April 2010, in Nicosia in CCMC premises with participation of members/ representatives of NGOs and interested individuals from both sides of Cyprus. The main purpose of the meeting was to equip the participants with an in-depth knowledge of how the right of access to information works in practice, the mechanisms for making use of the current regulatory framework in Cyprus, and the research methodology being applied so as to be able to be monitors for the study that involved filing requests to 10 public institutions on both sides of the island in order to measures the levels these institutions respect the right to know. The trainers used PPP, handouts, practical examples from previous projects etc.
The first session of the training started with presentation of the project partners and continued with the presentation of participants and their information needs. All of the participants committed themselves to be monitors for the project. During the second session David Goldberg, an international expert in access to information did a presentation on introduction/history of right of access to information which was found very interesting by all trainees. Later on KAB, IKME and Access Info EU representatives gave information about the Open Cyprus Coalition and project plans. The last session of the workshop was dedicated to preparation of the monitoring exercise: the representatives of the project partners talked about the goals and approach of monitoring, the request protocol was presented and plans for coordination and collecting results were discussed.
