The course " Funding and Finance for Municipalities: A Hands-on Guidance to Improve Project Funding" aims to address and respond to the challenges faced by municipalities in accessing the funding and finance needed to deliver infrastructure projects and sustainable development initiatives. The course will address the challenges of main revenue sources for municipalities, common bottlenecks to accessing funding and finance at a local level, and provide a foreseen solution, better understanding of the enabling conditions to improve access to funding and finance at the municipality level and identification of practical ways to do so. 

Municipalities globally are pivotal in delivering essential public services and advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, securing adequate resources and funding for these initiatives remains a persistent challenge. This challenge is especially acute for municipalities in secondary cities within the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries, which include Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The Mayors for Economic Growth (M4EG), a joint EU and UNDP initiative, aims to support these local governments in overcoming such challenges. While the initiative has made strides in developing economic plans and transformative projects, the task of attracting sufficient investment remains difficult.

This course aims to identify the primary obstacles municipalities in the EaP face in accessing diverse financial resources and propose solutions and recommendations for tackling these obstacles. The findings emphasize the need for enhanced resource mobilization strategies to empower municipalities to fund and implement their development goals successfully.