The Programme will run for 24 months during 2004 to 2006. The stages will be:

1. Inception phase: January 2004 - March 2004

During this period, preparations were made for the planning phase, including the identification of members of the Steering Group.

2. Planning phase: April 2004 - November 2004

During this phase, a Technical Planning Meeting was held in Helsinki, and the focus of the Programme was sharpened. Tasks were allocated to members of the Group and to the Secretariat.

It was agreed that a Fact-Finding Mission would be conducted in the relevant areas, to be preceded by a meeting in Moscow at the Ministry of Education, in the period 6th-12th September.

A second technical meeting is scheduled for 4th-5th November when reports from the experts who took part in the Fact-Finding Mission will be discussed, and the final shape of project agreed. Participants in the technical meeting will be tasked to undertake agreed activities by particular deadlines.

3. Preparatory phase: November 2004 - February 2005

In this phase, the results of the Fact-Finding Mission and the deliberations of the Second Technical Meeting will be assimilated, and more concrete plans prepared. Preparations will include:
· the adaptation and development of relevant informational material
· the adaptation and development of training material
· the creation of a prototype website in English and Russian
· exploration of other means of electronic delivery (TV, radio, mobile phones, etc)
· the identification of key Russian contacts in the relevant regions.

4. Implementation phase: March 2005 - February 2006

In this phase:
· the seminars and training will be carried out.
· materials and approaches will be developed for working with the key target groups
· the website will be revised and added to
· website forums and other methods of participatory involvement will be created
· the methods and techniques that showed particular promise in the appropriate contexts will be further developed
· ways of sustaining the work will be explored with the participants in the work
· ways of multiplication of the work with be explored.

5. Evaluation phase: March - May 2006

In the evaluation phase, an assessment will be made of the achievements of the programme and consideration given to what could have been done differently or better.

6. Follow-up planning: June 2006

Following the evaluation, the next steps in the work will be decided; in particular, the issues of sustainability and multiplication. Clearly, what is possible will depend on additional funding being available.

Evaluation Approaches

Since this is a pilot programme, evaluation is an important part of the work. It will be necessary to gather information about the operation of the programme from its inception to its conclusion. Process evaluation will chart the progress of the programme, and lessons learned during the process will, as far as possible, be fed back during the programme so that it can be developed and improved as it proceeds. At the end of the programme, the evaluation will report on those processes that appear to be most effective in achieving the programme objectives.

The evaluation will draw on the monitoring data collected during the programme, for example, the number of participants reached through training courses and by other means and the use made of the website in terms of, for example, numbers of 'hits', the web-pages visited, and the length of stay on pages. Such data will provide 'output' measures.

An assessment of outcomes of the work will be made by, for example, gathering data on whether or not participants have benefited from their involvement in the work. For example, through participant satisfaction surveys. Some of these data can be gathered via the website.

Activities

Planning and preparatory meetings, seminars and training courses.

Partners

Local and regional administrations, NGOs, service providers in rural communities and remote cities in Khanit-Mantsisk Autonomous Region, Tyumen Region, Udmurtia Autonomous Region, Sverdlovsk Region and Tyumen Region of the Russian Federation.

The Programme will be run in cooperation with federal authorities of the Russian Federation.