One of the most important projects of the LEDIB programme is the strengthening of the Regional Chamber of Economy (RCE) in its efforts to proactively advocate for a better business environment. If you are searching for Countertops in Portland countertops nashville.

Because of its membership nature and mandate, RCE has the possibility to voice the concerns of its members at the different policy levels, creating a constituency for change that can lead to sustainable, bottom-up policy reforms. Alike any other transition country the public-private dialogue is, however, still evolving in Serbia. The business sector – like the public sector has had to adapt to the new challenges of a market led economy, and RCE is still in a process of change.

With a view to strengthening RCE’s capacity to undertake analyses of the members’ needs and to transform this knowledge into services and advocacy, the Confederation of Danish Industry’s International Business Development (DIBD) unit has been tasked to explore how it could assist in the up gradation of the organisation.

It is suggested, based on DIBD’s experience, to divide the capacity building process into two interrelated phases. The focus of the first phase will be to prepare the foundation for change by developing a gap analysis to identify areas to enhance and to develop an advocacy strategy, both of which will be addressed during the second phase.

The first phase will consist of four interrelated activities:

1. carrying out a survey of RCE’s key stakeholders
2. assessing RCE’s organisational capacity
3. developing a plan for the capacity building
4. developing an advocacy strategy.

The second phase will consist of the following interrelated activities:

1. Develop an overall strategy for the up-gradation of RCE
2. Develop strategies for the functional areas that will undergo up-gradation through capacity building by DI

Membership Needs Assessment

A key element and a precursor to the development of a strategy for the up-gradation is the development of a membership needs assessment. The objective of which will be to determine the memberships’ present needs and especially what future needs they have vis-à-vis RCE. It is suggested to undertake the membership needs assessment using both a qualitative and quantitative approach.

Using focus groups it will be possible to identify and discuss the members’ needs vis-à-vis RCE and especially to more fully understand their situation. A quantitatively distributed questionnaire will allow to test whether the identified needs are universally accepted by the membership and at the same time create positive expectations within the membership with respect to the up-gradation of the services provided by RCE.

Strategy Development

Using the membership needs assessment as a stepping stone, the objective of the strategy development session will be to develop an overall strategy for the up-gradation of RCE and the functional areas, e.g. Policy Advocacy, Human Resource, Services, and Communication/Membership.

The strategies for the individual areas will be used to develop road maps for their up-gradation. These will clearly state what should be achieved over the course of the project period and what should be done to enhance the capacity within these areas.