The Forum of Federation’s Senior Advisor Dr. Reinold Herber visited the Pakistan capital Islamabad from July 25 – 28, 2011 to give support to the final steps of the project “Strengthening Federalism in Pakistan”. The project, which is funded by the German Office, has been running since October 2009 and will come to a close at the end of this year.

While the first two years have focused on the discussion of the main principles of federalism and their transfer to the current political situation of Pakistan with political stakeholders, high ranking civil servants, the academia and important decision makers of society, the last phase has focus on disseminating information on the implications of the 18th Amendment of the Pakistani Constitution to a broader public.

As an introduction to this purpose Reinold Herber gave a presentation about the general principles of political communication strategies followed by a discussion on messaging and the implementation of these guidelines into realization of the federalism project. The meeting was attended by the Forum’s staff in Islamabad, the Forum’s partner Center of Civic Education’s (CCEP) staff along with influential Pakistan media experts who will be responsible for the planning and executing of the “Public Education Campaign on the 18th Amendment of the Constitution” through electronic and print means of mass communication. The attendants of the meeting discussed in detail the issues related to target groups, communication tools, financing management, crisis management and assessment of the media and PR campaign.

Additionally the visit was used to optimize administrative proceedings and budgeting questions, with the Forum’s local staff and the Center of Civic Education – Pakistan (CCEP).

At the end of the visit Dr. Herber and Forum staff visited the German Embassy in Islamabad to inform about the recent outcomes of the project and about the finalizing steps. The Embassy has been giving its continuous support to the project since its launching two years ago.