Reunions reinvigorate the network through fresh programs of more advanced training, while face-to-face meetings serve as an opportunity for fellows to catch up, exchange insights and share newly gained experience. Grand reunions were staged in Istanbul (April 2003), Tbilisi (May 2004), and Almaty (October 2004). CELA members also got together when the program was showcased in May 2005 in Astana, Kazakhstan within the framework of the conference of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The February 2006 Giant Reunion took place in Bakuriani, Georgia and was devoted to reviewing the first five years of CELA and looking forward to its next five years.
As CELA celebrated its first six years, its members now have taken on more responsibility for developing and implementing their own meeting and project ideas. As program ownership passes to the CELA fellows, the question of how best to use the international, cross-border, multisectoral resources of the network to their best advantage falls to them. The Kyrgyz CELA team organized a week-log CELA brainstorming meeting at Issyk-Kul (Issyk Kul I), Kyrgyzstan in August-September 2006 members to take up the challenge of developing events to meet their own identified needs and priorities, whether conferences, workshops, roundtables, trainings, or other formats. Thus the idea was born of CELA Seminars. In February 2007, the first CELA Seminar took place in Yerevan, Armenia: the International Business Workshop. The second CELA seminar, "How to Succeed in the International Arena" was organized in Baku, Azerbaijan, also in February 2007, and was devoted to developing ideas for strategic cooperation among the network in the region. In October 2007, the Kyrgyz Team invited CELA fellows back to Issyk Kul (Issyk Kul II) to take stock of progress made since Issyk Kul I and reflect on new directions for the future. The meeting was themed "Improving Our Network". The Bukhara reunion took place in Uzbekistan in November 2007. The title of the event was "Regional Business and Other Cooperation Projects for CELA". Participants considered presentations of concrete, cross-border project ideas to involve the network. |
