---
title: "AI4NGOs"
slug: ai4ngos
type: project
kicker: "project № 10 · 2025 · lead in Cluj for CCIF"
accent: indigo
pills:
  - closed
  - August 2025
  - Cluj-Napoca
  - lead for CCIF Cyprus
role: "lead"
order: 5
summary: "Youth-worker training on AI in civil society, hosted in Cluj for CCIF Cyprus."
---

August 2025. A youth-worker training on AI in civil society, organised by uzinaduzina in Cluj-Napoca on behalf of CCIF Cyprus. The most recent step in a line of thinking that started with the [democraicy](project-democraicy) concept in 2020.

## what it was

A multi-day training in Cluj-Napoca focused on the use of artificial intelligence in the work of non-governmental organisations. uzinaduzina hosted and organised the activity locally; CCIF Cyprus carried the institutional partnership and the international cohort. The format combined technical sessions on the current capabilities and limits of AI tools, practical workshops on prompt engineering applied to NGO work, and reflective sessions that placed the tools inside a wider conversation about technology and civic life.

## why it mattered

Two reasons.

First, intellectual: AI4NGOs is the **concrete continuation** of the questions raised in November 2020 by the [democraicy](project-democraicy) concept: how do we use, design, and write about technology in ways that strengthen, rather than erode, democratic capacity? Five years later the question has gone mainstream, but few small organisations have our consistency in asking it from the civic side rather than the consumer side.

Second, organisational: hosting an international training at home is a different kind of work than travelling abroad as beneficiaries. It demanded local logistics, programme design, facilitation, and the careful matching of technical content to participants of varying backgrounds. We learned a great deal about what international youth work in our part of Europe needs from a host city, and we now carry that knowledge into future hosting roles.

## what we did

- **Technical sessions** on AI, models, capabilities, and limits.
- **Practical workshops**, including prompt engineering applied directly to NGO tasks (drafting, summarisation, research, communication).
- **Reflective sessions** placing AI tools in the wider context of digital ethics and civic capacity.
- **Cultural visits** in Cluj.
- **Group facilitation** for participants from multiple European partner organisations.

## what we learned

Three lessons that we expect to apply at future trainings.

1. **Small scale is a feature, not a limitation.** Tight cohorts allow individual calibration of attention; the participants leave with skills they can use the next morning, not with notes they will not reread.
2. **The technical-philosophical balance is hard to hit, and pays.** Not technology alone, not philosophy alone; dialogue between the two. Participants in the post-training feedback singled out this balance as the strongest aspect.
3. **The prompt-engineering workshop applied to NGO work was one of the highest-ROI sessions, subjectively.** Participants left with skills they could use immediately. We will replicate the format.

## numbers

- **Duration:** several days in late August 2025
- **Location:** Cluj-Napoca
- **Lead:** uzinaduzina (local organiser); CCIF Cyprus (institutional partner)

## read alongside

- [democraicy](project-democraicy): the conceptual root, 2020.
- [Cabinet of retrofuturist curiosities](project-cabinet-retrofuturist): the first workshop using AI as a tool.
- [CCIF Cyprus](partner-ccif): the institutional partner.
- [Manifesto: critical technology](manifesto-critical-technology)
- [Manifesto: calm technologies](manifesto-calm-technologies)