Within their interest in promoting the role of local NGOs, Maat for Peace, Development and Human Rights in cooperation with Hanns Seidel Stiftung – Egypt Office implemented the fourth training workshop for NGOs cadres in Port Said entitled "NGOs Tools to Support Decentralization" during May 23rd and 24th, 2013.

The workshop came in the framework of "Responsive Decentralization for Citizens' Rights" programme implemented by Maat in cooperation with Hanns Seidel Stiftung, the programme seeks to improve local administration conditions through raising the capacity of community actors and advocating decentralization, along with enabling women in the target governorates to produce community initiatives under decentralization. The workshop hosted 23 cadres of 12 local NGOs in Port Said.

The training programme included several components such as; analysis for local development parties and partners and their different roles in local development process, NGOs tools to observe the performance of public service providers and potential mechanisms, community scorecards approach and how to be used by local NGOs, and decentralization, good local governance, and local system reality in Egypt under the new constitution.

The participants through working groups were able to provide insights for implementing the Community Scorecards technique on the health services in Port Fouad city, the educational and security services in the governorate, in addition they were able to put quantitative and qualitative indicators to evaluate public service provision in the governorate.

The workshop is one of five training workshops programme during May in the target governorates including; Beni Suef, Gharbia, Cairo, Port Said, and the final one would be implemented in Alexandria.