On 20 February 2016, the "Support to the Moldovan Bar Association" component of the PCF Project on “Strengthening the efficiency of justice and support to lawyers’ profession in the Republic of Moldova” organized, jointly with the “Action for Justice Project” funded by the US Embassy in Moldova and implemented by Invento, a workshop on communication with media for a mixed group of over 20 lawyers, members of Moldovan Bar Association Governing bodies, perspective lawyers and law students. The activity is implemented towards strengthening the capacity of the Association and its members to apply management techniques, including in the communication field.
The workshop was designed based on participants expectations collected in advance. Lawyers are interested in communication with media to enable the promotion of human rights values or to enable position taking on issues debated in the society. For these reasons, the participants expressed the need to develop abilities to respond to journalists questions, to organize press conferences and/or to react to negative publicity. At the same time, participants discussed about the importance of internal and external communication of the Moldovan Bar Association. In this context, the members of the Moldovan Bar Association’s Council present at the workshop announced about a soon to be approved Communication Policy and Strategy to be implemented in 2016-2018. Both documents refer to the Association’s communication with its members, public authorities, development partners, media and other stakeholders.
As a result of the workshop, the participants acquired skills to build effective relationships with the media, taking into account the field specificities as addressed during the training.
The component on the "Support to the Moldovan Bar Association" of the "Strengthening the efficiency of justice and support to lawyers' profession in the Republic of Moldova" project is funded by the Programmatic Cooperation Framework for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus. The Council of Europe and European Union are working in partnership with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus to help them meet Council of Europe benchmarks in human rights, democracy and the rule of law and improve the lives of citizens.