1. Several members of the work team have undertaken a number of qualifying courses in the fields of transitional justice and democratization.

2. Work has been carried out preparing a website for the Centre. This will give information about the Centre and present an overview of it’s activities and programs. It will be three languages; Arabic, English and Kurdish and will be launched within a month.

3- The Centre for Civil Society and Democracy in Syria held its first round of online meetings on the topics of ‘developing civilian capabilities’ (strengthening self confidence) and ‘networking’ (developing and managing communications between people) . The meetings lasted six hours in total and were held in three separate sessions, each two hours long. ‘Developing civilian capabilities’ was held over two sessions on the 22nd and 26th April 2012. The session on ‘networking’ was held on 30th April 2012. Fifteen people from within Syria participated. Dr Yasir Abdul Fattah presented the meetings whilst two members of the centre supervised them. The general feedback on the meetings was positive, especially concerning the performance of Dr Yasir. The meetings were well received by the participants. An acceptable proportion of the participants were female- between 25-30% in these sessions, however there were some technical problems due to the weak internet connection in Syria and there was also a certain lack in the interactions between Dr Yasir and the participants. The centre is working seriously to increase the number of female participants and to improve the technical problems faced during the meetings. Finally all those at the Centre for Civil society and Democracy would like offer heartfelt thanks to Dr Yassir Abdul Fattah for volunteering with us and supervising this round of meetings.

4. Work is currently in progress to prepare for the launch of an educational program in the field of transitional justice in Syria.

5. We are communicating with many volunteers in many fields with whom we will collaborate during the second half of this period, to complete the work plan for the Centre. We have also been communicating with many organizations and experts who can voluntarily oversee the Centre’s activities.