PARLIAMENTARY CENTRE OF ASIA

The Parliamentary Centre of Asia (PCAsia), established in early 2021 in Phnom Penh, is the successor of the Parliamentary Institute of Cambodia (PIC) founded in 2011, a transition that reflects an expansion of activities with Parliaments across Southeast Asia. The mandate of PCAsia is therefore to contribute to the strengthening of Southeast Asian Parliaments through capacity building of their staff, based on the demands or requests of each Parliament within a framework of south-south and north-south cooperation. It draws on the expertise of national, regional, and international partners (Parliaments and research centres).

ROLE OF DEPARTMENT

The training of Parliamentary staff is at the core of PCAsia’s mission, and the Capacity Development (CD) department is responsible for carrying out the majority of this work. CD handles curriculum and syllabus design for many training programmes, and its staff provides practical training according to their respective expertise for most of the training programmes. With the transition to blended learning and learning by distance, CD staff increasingly plays a facilitation role, working with external experts to design and deliver content suitable for digital platforms, then working with trainees to complete the related assignments.

Other responsibilities include researching, mentoring and quality control of research products produced by the trained parliamentary researchers, and providing quality control and technical advice with regard to newly-trained parliamentary staff members when back working in their institutions in applying their newly-acquired skills.