About a year ago, we decided to start introducing countries that form the CEF constituency one every month at our premises.

We were thinking how to give higher visibility to our member institutions. So, we figured that presenting the countries one by one would be an interesting visual portrayal of the region where we help support capacity development for finance officials through learning.

In relation to that, we communicated with our national coordinators to inform them about the updates of their country’s presentation. We also gave our training participants the opportunity to share their reflections. Last but not least, we strengthened communication with the relevant embassies to keep them updated with the projects that we deliver for their countries.

Now a few words about the arrangement of the presentations. We displayed selected information about each country in our lobby, including interesting facts as well as landscape, cultural and culinary specifics. We did our own research on the countries but we also received a large amount of presentation materials from national embassies: brochures, souvenirs, books, maps and so on. We published some of these materials on our website and social media channels, and reported back to the embassies at the end of each monthly presentation.

Our learning facilitators talked about the culture of the countries at the learning events and encouraged participants to share their own experiences. People were keen to take photos in front of the display in our lobby, and later we included the photos in a digital presentation. We also spread the word about this initiative in our various communication channels.

Whenever possible, we offered culinary delights (mostly sweets), which are typically produced in the country, during the coffee breaks of our learning events.

Example of a country presentation in our lobby