With the start of the reform process, I have discovered that elections were about much more than just dispute resolution, which I had been previously concentrating on, and becoming part of it required from me now a thorough understanding of the whole electoral framework.

“I developed the plan for measures to reform the fuel subsidy in Kyrgyzstan with the support of other participants and mentors of the GFR e-course. Now, it’s considered as the basis for real intervention and proposed to be included in the next phase of the country development programme in Kyrgyzstan.”

After taking an e-course on “Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) in Asia”, Mr. Bumerdene Dulam developed the Green Business Handbook and training manual for the Ministry of Environment and organized a training for more than 1,000 Mongolian companies.

“While donors nowadays emphasize on sustainable development, the finance of such development is becoming scarcer and scarcer. For this reason, governments will need to shift away from traditional external donor funding and move towards more sustainable finance mechanisms that can be allocated and managed in-country.”

UNITAR courses don’t just provide information — they help individuals develop ideas and solutions to the problems they face. They help individuals cultivate sustainable solutions. Mamunur Rahman is one of these individuals.

"With the new electoral body for the 2011 elections, there has been so much improvement including the 2015 elections and we hope that the elections of 2019 will consolidate the successes furthermore.”

Before she participated in her first UNITAR training, Ms. Syeda Bushra Binte Amin was working at the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), a regional organization focused on disaster preparedness in Bangladesh.

“It was hard to know the exact damage area from flood, drought or other disaster because they happened fairly frequently and all estimates were done manually. Now, with GIS we can show our department and ministry a clear picture of the area of disaster and other important information quickly”.

“Instead of the old method of information sharing, I now use technologically advanced tools to convert probability of precipitation to actual rainfall amounts for specific areas, and that final output is put into GIS maps with which farmers can interact and understand.” 

"The impact for peace training really opened my eyes to practical ‘learning by doing’ training techniques that I have integrated into my own money management training modules to a very powerful effect.”