On December 14th, 2015, at 18:30, in Rooms Hotel Tbilisi, participants of the competition Open Parliament - Voice of Youth will be awarded. The goal of the above-mentioned competition was to raise awareness among youth on the topics of parliamentary openness. Participants have attended trainings and met with the representatives of the Parliament of Georgia. Students also had an opportunity to elaborate their own ideas about the openness and transparency of the Parliament and boost civic engagement in legislative activities and present the initiatives to the IDFI. Approximately 40 students participated in the competition and 15 of them presented their initiatives. Representatives of the Parliament of Georgia, EU Delegation to Georgia and the United Nations Development Programme, among them Stephen Stork, Deputy Head of Operations, European Union Delegation to Georgia, Shombi Sharp, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Georgia, Guguli Maghradze, Member of the Parliament Inter-Factional Group and Giorgi Kldiashvili, Director of the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information, will award the participants. The authors of the best ideas will be awarded with the Kindle, while four other authors of outstanding initiatives will be gifted a Voucher for purchasing books.

Before the awarding ceremony starts, the meeting of the Inter-Factional Group of the Parliament of Georgia and Open Parliament Working Group will take place at 13:30, in Rooms Hotel Tbilisi. Results of the project "Supporting Involvement of the Parliament of Georgia in the Open Government Partnership" for 2015 year will be discussed at the meeting. Members of the Inter-Factional and Working Groups will attend the gathering; among them the Head of the Inter-Factional Group of the Parliament of Georgia - Tamar Kordzaia will also be present. With the involvement of Ms. Kordzaia, the Parliament is discussing amendments to the rules of procedure in order to establish a Permanent Parliamentary Council on Open and Transparent Governance. It should be noted that the initiative of establishing a permanent parliamentary council is a commitment laid out in the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan 2015-2016 and initiated by the Institute for Development of Freedom of Information (IDFI). The Inter-Factional Group of the Parliament of Georgia and Open Parliament Working Group were established in the beginning of 2015 and their aim was elaborating an Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan which was adopted by the Bureau of the Parliament of Georgia on July 17th.

Successful cooperation of the Parliament and the civil society organizations was confirmed at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit Mexico on October 27-29, when the Inter-Factional Group of the Parliament of Georgia was awarded with the Champion's Award.

On December 14th, Open Parliament Working Group will discuss how their initiatives laid out in the Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan 2015-2016 can be implemented in practice.

The meeting will gather the representatives of the Parliament of Georgia and International and Non-governmental Organizations.

The competition Open Parliament – Voice of Youth, and the meeting of the Inter-Factional Group and the Open Parliament Georgia Working Group, is carried out within the scopes of the project "Supporting Involvement of the Parliament of Georgia in the Open Government Partnership" which is funded by the EU and the Parliament of Georgia and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) along with IDFI. The goal of the project is to ensure parliamentary openness, transparency of the legislative work and citizen involvement into it. Within the framework of the project Open Parliament Georgia Action Plan 2015-2016 was elaborated encompassing 18 commitments on the topics of civic engagement, access to information, strengthening accountability, supporting innovation and technological development.