Study Visit Local Economic Development

The Local Economic Development Study Visit was organised by the Hague Academy for Local Governance (The Hague Academy) and Development Academy Philippines and was delivered as part of the Study Visit Mission Development Academy Philippines. The training had the objective to familiarise the participants with the link between Local Economic Development and decentralisation efforts, based on best practices in the Netherlands, with a total of 25 policymakers from the Philippines partaking on the training.

The objectives of the training were for the participants to be able to:

• Identify best practices and strategies on local economic development and public service delivery that can be adapted to their own government units.
• Compare inter- and intragovernmental relations of the Philippines and the Netherlands to learn how decentralisation can serve local economic development.
•  Integrate lessons learned into an action plan which will demonstrate how the lessons learned can be transferred into localised innovative strategies.

Furthermore, the participants had the opportunity to visit the World Horti Center, the Koppert Cress, the Biesbosch National Park and had and open data tour in the city of Utrecht in order to connect the knowledge obtained through the training sessions with tangible examples.