Under the EU4Environment Action and as part of the activities on Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production (RECP), UNIDO organized an event dedicated to the barriers, challenges, opportunities, and benefits of implementing the RECP methodology in the Republic of Moldova.
The event took place on 14 July 2023 at the headquarters of Organizația pentru Dezvoltarea Antreprenoriatului (ODA) and was based on the “World Café” concept.
The objective of the event was to gather participants and industry members from the RECP training and coaching programme, representatives from the EBRD EU4Business programme, members of the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalization, the Ministry of Environment, and the Organization for Development of Entrepreneurship (ODA), alongside representatives from UNIDO, EU4Environment, and EU4Business-related experts.
The event focused on sharing views, lessons learned, and potentially new cooperation opportunities, as well as on collecting experiences from the implementation of RECP, mainly:
- successful examples from the RECP implementation in Moldova
- barriers (including technical) in implementing RECP nationwide
- legal and environmental aspects, fees, taxes, financing
- awareness and motivation within entrepreneurs
- results, benefits, and opportunities for institutionalizing RECP.
The World Cafe format uses an informal cafe setting for participants to explore an issue by discussing it in small table groups. Discussion is held in multiple rounds of 20-30 minutes, with the cafe ambience intended to allow a more relaxed and open conversation. Each round is initiated with a specific question related to the overall purpose of the event. The same questions can be used for more than one round, or they can build upon one another. During the event, the participants discuss the questions at their table, before moving on to a new table/group for each new round. Often, the participants are provided with pens and are encouraged to draw, write, and record their conversations on paper to capture free-flowing ideas as they emerge.
One participant (the table host) remains still and summarises the previous conversation with the newly arrived participants. By moving participants around the room, the conversations at each table are cross-fertilised with ideas from other tables, resulting in collective intelligence. At the end of the process, the main ideas are summarised in a plenary session and follow-up opportunities are discussed.
For more information, please contact Ms. Aurelia Sarari, UNIDO National Coordinator.