Panamanian leaders trained in alliance with IUGT

(Panama, November 26, 2010) - A total of 550 natural leaders from various sectors of the country benefited from the program given in Panama. The CAF Leadership for Transformation program, executed in partnership with IUGT International (University Institute of Management and Technology), provides tools to enable new generations to exercise their citizenship and community action with responsibility, knowledge and awareness of the reality of the country.

Leadership for Transformation is one of the lines of action that CAF promotes in the region in the area of governance. The main purpose of the Program is to identify, select and train natural leaders, men and women, in vision of country and civic-democratic values, in an effort to lay the foundations for a new style of leadership, reinforcing their value systems and giving them the tools they need to take on responsibilities of leadership in the future based on ethics and with deep civic and democratic sensibility, in line with the reality of their situation.

The participants in the graduation ceremony were for CAF Elvira Lupo, director of technical cooperation, and Rubén Ramírez, director representative in Panama.

During the ceremony Ramírez said his institution was currently managing four complementary and integrated programs for training men and women. The programs are: Ethics and Transparency for Development, Decentralization and Citizen Participation, Institution Building, and Leadership for Transformation. "The latter program trains men and women who are natural leaders to promote and build consensus in citizens based on the reality of their country," Ramírez said.

Leadership for Transformation is implemented in five Andean countries and has so far trained a total of 18,000 natural leaders. Training takes place over six months and revolves around three pivots: individual, collective and public, striving for the balance that should exist between State and community.