Clingendael Academy trainers provided a capacity-building workshop for the Defence Institute Building School (DIBS) in Tbilisi, Georgia, in November 2018. The workshop aimed to support DIBS institutional capacities in learning and knowledge management.

Training on Learning Management

DIBS has already been able to build on an impressive and growing amount of staff experience and has benefited from external support from Clingendael and other partners. In the November workshop, therefore, Clingendael facilitated a self-assessment of DIBS´ current curriculum development cycle, in which DIBS staff engaged in discussion and a comparison of best practices and challenges.

The workshop initially focused on the five classic steps:

• Analysis: how to determine the training needs of a particular organisation or target audience;
• Design: translating those training needs into a curriculum that can meet clearly formulated learning goals, and uses the right kind of working formats and approach for the target audience;
• Development: the whole process of planning and organizing the training program, logistical and content preparations, and communication and co-creation with outside experts;
• Implementation:  executing the training program; from logistics to managing group dynamics;
• Evaluation: monitoring and evaluating each of these phases, and using the results to improve the next learning cycle; evaluation on learning, behaviour and impact effects

The discussion and self-assessment started in the November workshop will be continued during the following month, and the results will be shared during an upcoming ‘Lessons Learned’ workshop at the end of January. In it, DIBS will reflect on its institutional growth and development over the past two years.

Training on Knowledge Management

Introduced in this capacity building programme for the first time, Clingendael trainers also delivered an introduction on Knowledge Management and organisational learning. This introduction will be built upon in 2019 to facilitate DIBS in developing tools to uncover, map, share and use knowledge and experience already present in their own growing organisation, to enhance organisational learning. The tools that can be used for this include post-project reviews, formulating and capturing current best practices in standard operation procedures, re-teaching of external lessons, and more.

Cooperation between Clingendael Academy and DIBS

DIBS was created in 2016 and fosters the professional and institutional development of the Georgian Ministry of Defense by providing training courses, sharing best practices and analyses. The creation of DIBS was one of the initiatives of the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package endorsed by NATO allies at the Wales Summit in 2014. This week´s workshop program is part of a broader cooperation between Clingendael academy and DIBS, in which Clingendael supports DIBS development as a professional training and education center. This capacity building program formally commenced in 2016 with support from the Netherlands MFA and will last until 2021, supported through the NATO trust fund.