January 20-22, 2016, in Pushcha-Vodytsia, PLEDDG Project conducted the second training session on the topic of local economic development (LED) with representatives of local government authorities of PLEDDG partner cities.
During the first day of the training, participants were taught principles of marketing territories and stages of the marketing strategy formation and implementation. Natalia Grynchyuk, associate professor of the chair of regional management, local government and city management of NAPA, explained to the participants the algorithm of city marketing and told about peculiarities of the marketing strategy formation. Larysa Olenkovska, PLEDDG Project consultant for local economic development was teaching the participants methods of marketing research data collection and their analysis.
Kadie Ward, PLEDDG Senior Governance Advisor, spoke about how to determine and describe competitive advantages of the cities with the purpose of forming their image and reputation. Ms. Ward also shared a secret of successful branding of the city having demonstrated an example of the Canadian city of Regina which has successfully created and implemented its own branding campaign. Additionally to Kadie Ward, the best Canadian practices in the sphere of LED were presented by specially invited Canadian experts John Regan, head of the administrative department of French River city, and Grant Hopcroft, municipal expert in the issues of democratic governance from London city, Canada.
The second day of the training was devoted to support and development of local business and entrepreneurship. That day, the participants got to know about peculiarities of elaboration, adoption, and implementation of municipal programs of LED development, particularly for encouragement for women in entrepreneurship, attraction of the youth to business running, support of environmentally friendly business and social entrepreneurship. Natalia Vasilyeva and Grygorii Borshch, associate professors of the chair of regional management, local government and city management of NAPA, told the training participants about instruments of LED stimulation and support, particularly about local and industry business associations, councils on entrepreneurship, advocacy campaigns and lobbying of business interests.
During the third day of the training, participants gained knowledge on principles of investments. Volodymyr Proskyrnin, PLEDDG Project consultant in local economic development, explained the algorithms of actions of local authorities in work with investors and investment projects and described methods of passive and active promotion of investment opportunities of the territory.
Additionally to listening of the lecture material, participants were involved working groups, in the course of which they were jointly solving tasks via brainstorming and experience exchange.
