Indonesian development is increasingly being handled by regional authorities in the country's process of decentralization. However, the capacities and skills of provincial government officials are not sufficiently advanced to plan and manage development projects utilizing local resources such as natural resources and agricultural products. Against this background, UNCRD conducted a two-year training course, "Capacity-Building of Regional Development Management," 2003-2004, in order to further improve the country's capacity for regional development. Another training course "Regional Development Management" for Indonesia was held in 2006 (14 November to 13 December), in collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), targeting six provinces in less-developed Sulawesi Island. The course provided ten officials (eight from the provincial governments in Sulawesi and two from the Ministry of Home Affairs engaged in regional development) with an opportunity to acquire knowledge and skills necessary for regional development management and to understand the importance of endogenous regional development (ERD) based on full use of local characteristics and resources.

The contents of these courses consisted of lectures, field visits, group discussions, and preparation and presentation of action plans, while the course curriculums were structured around the following three modules: (a) outline of regional development; (b) management of regional development; and (c) ERD. The lectures covered: Aichi Prefectural Government's regional plan; ERD measures utilizing local resources; characteristics of local resources and their utilization; and strategies for marketing local specialty products. During field visits, participants observed innovative shops which market their prefectures' local foodstuffs in Tokyo; revitalization efforts to set up public-private companies to develop specialty products and sell them at Michinoeki (road stations); and farmers' attempts to diversify into other forms of agricultural business such as direct sales of agricultural products, vegetable digging, and fruit-picking at Joyful Farm Unoike.

Participants learned how to rediscover and utilize local resources for local economic development as well as how to facilitate collaboration with government, industry, and academia in the process of development. Through this process, participants were able to improve their planning and management capabilities in regional development, in particular, techniques to mobilize local resources for local economic development. Through lectures using case studies and field visits, they recognized the importance of endogenous development emphasizing available local resources, including human resources, especially key persons who can lead the community.

At the end of the course, group action plans were formulated by participants, with each plan containing a unique idea and proposal to develop each participant's respective province with focus on poverty reduction and empowerment of the poor, by making full use of their various local products and resources such as marine resources for tourism, corn, virgin coconut oil, and marbles, all of which are available on Sulawesi Island. Participants are expected to make efforts to disseminate what they learned about Japan's regional development management to be reflected and shared at their respective work places, which should facilitate poverty reduction in Sulawesi Island, thus contributing to Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) attainment in Indonesia as a whole. They were required to submit a report describing the progress of their dissemination activities as well as action plans.