The Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy (EECMD) with the financial support of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been implementing the project “Democracy needs democrats: strengthening political parties and movements through strategic planning”. The project provides much-needed guidance and assistance to the political parties and movements in strategic planning for organizational and policy development.

Furthermore, this project aims to increase the policy-making and organizational capabilities and the effectiveness and sustainability of five political parties and/or movements in Georgia by helping them to develop strategic plans. The strategic plans are overarching policy documents of these organizations, identifying and defining their missions and visions, their key policy and programmatic views and beliefs. Strategic plans also outline the detailed set of decisions and activities designed and agreed upon within the organizations required to improve and enhance the organizational effectiveness and democratic intra-party processes.

Based on the project priorities and the political developments, five political parties and movements were selected for partnership: For Justice, Development Movement, Civil Movement, Shame Movement, and Women’s Council of “Lelo for Georgia”.

The strategic planning methodology for political parties was developed in 2011 by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) and the Eastern European Centre for Multiparty Democracy (EECMD) and has been substantially upgraded in 2018. The methodology provides step-by-step guidance to the civil society organizations/political parties/movements in strategically planning the improvement of key organizational capacities and leads them towards becoming more effective and sustainable institutions.