Tbilisi. It has been several years since the Civil Society Institute offers online learning programs to various representatives of society. Among them is ''Basics of self-governance'', which was created for public servants. This year up to 500 applications were submitted to the mentioned distance learning course and 240 participants got registered within the frames of three study groups. During 2 months public servants, in parallel to their work, were attending the course, which contained both theoretical and practical parts of self-governance, and they were in constant communication with Irakli Melashvili, the lecturer. 158 servants from all three groups received a course certificate.

Online learning program was created within the framework of a project – ''Distance learning for effective self-governance'', financial supporter of which is the ''Open Society – Georgia Foundation''.

Under the same project, the Civil Society Institute has published handbooks for self-government servants (previously the Institute published similar handbooks in 2012). Namely: a handbook – for members of the City Council, a handbook – for employees of an executive body of a self-government unit. The author of both of them is Alexandre Svanishvili.