Day of the Communication for Eastern-Europe, held in The Hague

DECP organised a 2 day workshop on communication for employers' organisations in The Hague on 22 and 23 May. Staff members responsible for communication and PR of the Employers' Organisations (EO) of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Macedonia, Albania, Moldova, Armenia and Georgia participated in the workshop.

Special advisor Jean-Marie Standaert explained why communication with the members and other stakeholders is so crucial for the existence and growth of an EO. Roel Smit, chief editor of the weekly magazine Forum of the largest EO of the Netherlands, VNO-NCW, explained how to draft a newsletter. Also the existing newsletters of the participating EOs were analysed and in a following exercise the participants were asked to improve their newsletter or to design a newsletter if they did not have one.
On the next day Roel Smit and Rene Bekker, head of the information department of VNO-NCW, explained the importance of a website for an EO and they showed the participants how one could install free software to maintain a website. Afterwards, the participants had to draft their own homepage. The evaluation showed that the participants really appreciated the workshop and learned a lot.