ICDP training of future facilitators started in Baku in October 2024, and it was sponsored by Normisjon. A team from Normisjon had been working on bringing ICDP to the country over several months before the training actually began. The second phase of training took place in December, followed by trainees’ first pilot projects from January to April. The certification workshop was held in early April 2025.
The training of this new group of facilitators was conducted by Magdalena Brännström. Initially there were ten participants, including two psychologists, one doctor, one occupational therapist, and six teachers. At the end, nine became certified as ICDP facilitators at the April workshop.
An important aspect of the ICDP process involves working on the adaptation of the programme and its delivery to the Azerbaijani context. This was tentatively started by local trainee facilitators while they were delivering the programme to local parents/caregivers for the first time. During the period of these first pilot projects groups of parents were invited to join ICDP courses. Most trainee facilitators ran ICDP courses in Azerbaijani, but there were two groups that delivered it in Russian and English respectively.
“In general, the group connected and shared stories all through the training, and everyone related to each other well. It was a really nice experience for me to see how well the facilitators had done their self-training pilot projects with parents/caregivers. This became evident at the final workshop I conducted in Baku, in April 2025. At the end of the training, we also talked about the importance of child protection and that ICDP has zero tolerance when it comes to abuse, so that the ICDP Child Protection Policy will be signed by all facilitators.The future seems very promising for ICDP in Azerbaijan.” – ICDP trainer, Magdalena Brännström. The contact person for ICDP in Azerbaijan is Deborah Williams, from Normisjon.