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Description
The project objective is to increase the level and quality of public participation in decision-making at the local level in Poland, by training approximately 400 ‘public participation practitioners’ to become promoters and organisers of participatory processes in their communities.
Main components:
1. Networking, exchange knowledge and education activities, including: 5 nation-wide ‘Participation Practitioners’ Forums’ (annual peer-learning 2-days events);7 regional ‘Participation Practitioners’ Forums’ (peer-learning 1-day events);one interactive event for young leaders of public participation;and 4-5 seminars focused on deepening knowledge on concrete aspects or topics of participation processes.
2. An anti-burning programme aimed at officials responsible for conducting civic participation processes in their local governments.
3. Development and promotion of a web portal
4. Promotion of dialogue and public participation in municipalities and institutions which have not used participative tools nor organised public consultations in the past.
The planned activities will enable the representatives of municipalities, CSOs and local leaders to gain new skills, knowledge and contacts, and as a result - to increase the group of civic participation practitioners in Poland. The project will help to identify, integrate and empower participation practitioners, both beginners and seasoned specialists from all over Poland: members of the CSO and local activists, including young people, but also local government officials and councillors.
Thanks to the project they will improve their skills and become promoters and organisers of participatory processes in their communities in the future. They will be able to organize more processes of better quality, engage new groups, collaborate with local partners, develop local activism.
Summary of project results
An important context for our activities is strong social polarization and the increasingly sharp course of political debate, resulting in the disappearance of the culture of conversation and cooperation, as well as a low sense of influence on the political reality of the country among citizens. There are also large disproportions in the use of various methods of civic participation between large cities and smaller centers. We wanted to respond to these challenges through our project. Our goal was to strengthen the community of civic participation practitioners and to popularize and develop civic participation in Poland.
As part of the project, we organized events aimed at exchanging experiences, educating and networking participation practitioners:
- 5 Participation Practitioners Forums, i.e. nationwide, two-day events gathering approx. 300 officials, representatives of public institutions, social activists involved in involving citizens in decision-making processes concerning public affairs. During the forums, we addressed diverse topics, the common denominator of which was civic participation in the practical dimension.
- 7 Regional Participation Practitioners Forums (in Toruń, Nowa Sól, Białystok, Łódź, Szczecin, Kraków, Przemyśl), i.e. events similar in nature to nationwide forums, but on a smaller scale and addressed exclusively to people from a specific part of Poland.
- 5 seminars, or educational meetings, during which we focused on a selected topic, e.g. a specific method of conducting social dialogue (citizens'' panel), a thematic area (citizen participation in processes related to climate and environmental protection), a legal aspect (regulations regarding civic budgets) or including a group (disabled people) in participatory processes;
- 1 youth forum, or a two-day meeting devoted to participation for young people. The participants and presenters were mainly young social activists.
In addition, as part of the project, we expanded the website partycypacjaobywatelska.pl. We placed articles and other content on the website with greater intensity, updated and transformed the database of participation practitioners and the section on participatory budgeting.
We organized an anti-burnout program addressed to civil servants dealing with civic participation. The workshops were conducted by trainers dealing with burnout prevention, who also have experience in participatory activities.
We also promoted a conversation (citizens'' conference) as the first step to jointly finding solutions to the challenges surrounding us. To this end, we recruited firefighters from Volunteer Fire Departments in various parts of Poland, who after training, conducted citizens’ conferences in their local communities on water management. In total, 16 conferences were held.
Activities related to education, networking and knowledge exchange (Participation Practitioners Forum, Regional Participation Practitioners Forums, Youth Forum, seminars) contributed to raising the knowledge of event participants in various aspects related to civic participation. In total, 1865 people took part in the educational events organized by us. It is worth emphasizing that the evaluation surveys clearly show the participants'' satisfaction with taking part in the meetings. They showed that the content provided at the events was not only interesting for them, but also had a practical dimension and was useful in their work - it brought with it knowledge and inspiration for action. As benefits, participants particularly emphasized the opportunity to meet other practitioners dealing with civic participation. In surveys, as well as during conversations with participants and co-organizers of the Regional Forums of Participation Practitioners, satisfaction with the fact that we started organizing the Practitioner Forums at the regional level was emphasized. The need for such meetings and networking of people involved in participation regionally was noted, because they can really contribute to change in the region and result in more frequent use of tools for involving residents in co-decision processes. Thanks to the meetings, we managed to reach less experienced people (approx. 20-30% of Regional Forums’ participants) - dealing with the topic of participation for a short time (for a year), as well as people for whom it is not the main task at work (i.e. they are not officials of departments dealing with social consultations/representatives of social organizations that specialize in participatory activities). Another interesting thing in terms of the profile of Regional forums’ participants is that a large part of them (approx. 30%) come from towns with fewer than 49 thousand inhabitants and villages. This is a clear difference in relation to the participants of nationwide Forums – attended largely by people experienced in activities in this thematic area and coming from large cities.
As part of the project, we have enriched the portal partycypacjaobywatelska.pl – on the website we have placed and published articles and news about events and new trends in civic participation.
The number of recipients of our newsletter has also increased significantly (2,762 recipients).