2011

• CALD Workshop on Building a Strategic Campaign Plan
  11-15 March 2011 | Bangkok, Thailand
  How to build a strategic campaign plan is a crucial topic for CALD member parties, a significant number of which will be contesting national elections within the next three years. In recognition of the importance of strategic campaign plans to electoral success, CALD and the Democrat Party of Thailand (DP), with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF), organised a workshop to enhance the capacity of CALD member parties in contesting elections by highlighting the significance of fundraising, public-opinion research, electoral database management and analysis, and message development and media relations.
• CALD Youth Strategic Planning Workshop
  25-27 March 2011 | Kandy, Sri Lanka
  In 2010, a workshop showed the commitment of CALD member organisations to forming a youth group for CALD. But there remained a need to discuss CALD Youth’s structure, functions and program directions; hence a follow-up workshop was held in 2011. Hosted by the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka (LPSL), with the support of FNF, the 2011 workshop aimed to define the nature, organisational structure, aims and programs of the CALD Youth, as well as its relationship with other national, regional and international youth organisations. It also allowed young leaders representing CALD members organisations to create a strategic plan for CALD Youth while learning strategic planning techniques, which they could then apply within their respective parties. In addition, the participants discussed, analysed and made recommendations on how to promote liberalism among Asian youth given the current political, economic, and social context and developments in the region.
• Liberal International 57th Congress
  16-20 June 2011 | Manila, Philippines
  This event was hosted by the Liberal Party of the Philippines (LP), Liberal International’s (LI) first full member in Asia, and co-organized by CALD and FNF-Philippine Office. The Congress is the prime legislative body of LI and has the power to direct the policy of the organisation. Held at least once every 18 months, the Congress aims to gather hundreds of high-level politicians from liberal parties, institutions and think tanks from all over the world. With the theme “Human Rights and Free Trade,” the 57th LI Congress captured the complex interplay, in both theory and practice, between these two core liberal principles.
• CALD Women’s Caucus Workshop
  11-14 August 2011 | Malacca, Malaysia
  Advancing women in politics, going beyond affirmative action, setting the CALD Women’s Caucus agenda, and training for grassroots organizing have all been tackled by previous meetings and activities of CALD Women’s Caucus. But another important aspect of increasing women’s political participation has been getting women elected into national leadership positions and campaigning in the same arena as their male counterparts. This workshop on “Marketing and Messaging Strategies for Women Candidates” aimed to identify the challenges that women candidates face in launching electoral campaigns and positive qualities/advantages that voters seek in women leaders. Hosted by Parti Gerakan Rakyat Malaysia (PGRM), with the support of FNF, the activity also allowed the participants to learn techniques in training women candidates on marketing and messaging strategies.
• CALD Networking for Democracy
  3-4 November 2011 | Singapore
  With the theme “Networking for Democracy: Towards a Democratic Future for Singapore” and hosted by the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), this event was a follow -up to the April 2010 Joint Mission to Asia that included visits to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. As international/regional networks of democratic and liberal political parties, LI and CALD’s presence in Singapore helped send a strong message of solidarity to the city-state’s democratic opposition and more specifically, to the SDP. Considering that LI also awarded Dr. Chee Soon Juan the 2011 LI Prize for Freedom, this was the most opportune time to hold an event in Singapore that highlighted value of forging alliances and sharing information for the cause of freedom, democracy and human rights.
• CALD Bali Conference
  4-7 November 2011 | Bali, Indonesia
  Indonesia, with more than 225 million inhabitants, has the fourth largest population in the world. yet despite its ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity, it was managed to maintain peace and trek a path toward democracy and development. It is in this light that CALD chose Indonesia as the venue of its conference of “Pluralism and Development in Asia: Issues and Prospects.” Indeed there is no other place where this reality is more evident than Bali, which has been designated as “Province of Peace, Democracy and Tolerance.” The conference, hosted by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), with the support of FNF, brought together government officials, parliamentarians, party leaders, academics, and civil-society activists to tackle the issues and problems related to the theory and practice of pluralism among the participants. The event also served to identify and discuss the links between pluralism and development, and the extent to which pluralism can serve as a tool for both political and human development.
• CALD Workshop on Women Empowerment
  15-17 November 2011 | Yangon, Myanmar
  A monumental event that marked CALD’s first ever workshop in Burma was hosted by the National League for Democracy (NLD), in cooperation with the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) and with the support of FNF. Forty women leaders and activists from five states and seven divisions around Burma participated in the workshop that aimed to prepare the women’s wing of the NLD for the 2012 elections, increase the political participation of women in the NLD and empower them to take greater and more influential leadership positions, and establish a sustainable framework of partnership between the CALD Women’s Caucus and NLD women’s wing.
• CALD Climate Change Workshop I
  28 November – 1 December 2011 | Bangkok, Thailand
  In cooperation with the Democrat Party of Thailand (DP) and with the support of FNF, CALD organised its first ever climate change event late in the year. Called “Setting CALD’s Climate Change Agenda,” the workshop aimed to: (1) provide a background on the issue of climate change, particularly on those aspects relevant to policy makers; (2) discuss the climate-change initiatives of CALD member-parties and the issues and problems that the parties confronted in their formulation and implementation; (3) identify the areas of climate change most relevant to Asia and which CALD should concentrate on; (4) formulate a liberal climate-change agenda that incorporates the identified priority areas; and (5) devise a strategic plan that identifies follow-up activities, objectives and responsibilities, and intended outcomes.

Categorised in: Conferences & Workshops

This post was written by CALD