Communication and Influence

• Linking Spaces: promoting alternative discourse amongst youth is a programme which provides youth with alternative platforms to engage with each other on issues relevant to them. CEPA recognises the problem of limited space for engagement available to youth; discussions take place in isolation, either in physical spaces or online. CEPA aims to address this issue by creating an interlinked online-offline space where youth can interact and the resulting discussions becollated and made accessible to a wider audience. The project assigned by an American Center-Youth Empowerment Grant also aims to engage youth from a range of backgrounds and bring them together to share perspectives and ideas. The discussion will be focused on, but not limited to, the topics of ethnic reconciliation, limited employment opportunities and education, and will include relevant issues and linkages to the current context and wider youth issues.
(Communication and Policy Programme)

• CEPA facilitated a multi-stakeholder workshop entitled "An Industry in Transition: The future of the plantation community" that was hosted by CARE Sri Lanka, WUSC and the Ethical Tea Partnership. The objectives of the workshop was to discuss the challenges currently facing the tea industry and some ideas and innovative approaches to address these issues especially with regard to industry competitiveness and worker welfare and social protection.
(Communication and Policy Programme)

• The Resource Centre obtained funding support from the Asia Foundation for a period of one year (August 2012-July 2013) to strengthen the physical and electronic resource base to enable accessibility of the services to a wider research community. The project titled CEPA Resource Centre - nurturing knowledge and inspiring change also supports the generation of trilingual research publications in the form of Working Papers, Poverty and Thematic Briefs.
(Communication and Policy Programme)

• Poverty Portal
The Poverty Portal is an online information sharing tool for practitioners and researchers who want to share or use information, and pulls together macro and micro level information on poverty in Sri Lanka. By acting as a central hub of information, a virtual library that anyone online can access, the database helps improve dissemination through a range of interactive tools such as newsletters, blog discussions and representation of data graphically through the maps and stats section.
(Communication and Policy Programme)

Training

• CEPA conducted a training on Improving your facilitation skills from the 25 - 27th of April, 2012. The objective of this training was to improve participants' confidence and skills to design and facilitate group events (focus groups, meetings, retreats, trainings, workshops) in a professional and effective way to achieve desired outcomes. The training was held at SAP-Sri Colombo.

• CEPA conducted a training workshop Poverty Measurement and Analysis (PEP training) from the 20th - 24th of February, 2012. The aim of the workshop was to provide participants with an intensive training on some of the most updated methodologies and tools for policy analysis in the field of development economics. The Training was held at Hotel Renuka

• An Intensive Training on Qualitative Research Methods was conducted by CEPA on the 18th - 20th of January, 2012. The aim of the training workshop was to provide the participants with a broad understanding and appreciation of qualitative research approaches, and a 'hands on' introduction to methods and tools of doing qualitative research. It was intended to lay a solid foundation for designing and implementing qualitative research through an understanding of the design, data collection, data management, analysis and reporting stages of the research process. The workshop was conducted at SAP-Sri Colombo.