Description
The rate of civic participation in Romania is very low - less than 10% of Romanian citizens have practiced active citizenship 5% of them have ever signed a petition – situation caused by the scarcity of civic skills and learning opportunities next to the lack of civic spaces that may facilitate citizens’ agglutination for civic involvement. The project objective is to develop a system for active citizenship by valorizing the concept of “third places”. For this purpose, Progress Foundation will: 1. Create third places (“democracy nests”) in public libraries as training hubs for active citizenship 2. Train active citizens and organize Civic Action Groups 3. Empower GAC members to practice civic behaviors by auditing the level of integrity in local administrations. The main project results will be: 14 democracy nests installed in public libraries, 210 local stakeholders who become active citizens, 40 trainers of active citizens and 15,000 people informed about the benefits of civic involvement. The donor partner, Leadership Foundation, will transfer a replicable training methodology on active citizenship which will be used to train trainers and active citizens.
Summary of project results
Fewer than 10% of Romanians have attended civic involvement activities and less than 5% of them ever signed a petition. Romanians expect the public institutions to solve their problems, but don’t put pressure on them. Under these circumstances, the performance measurement of the public administration done by citizens is an important step for strengthening the local democracy. The project’s aim was to develop a full system of facilitation of community participation by training active citizens and creating spaces for protection and promotion of the democratic values. During the project, the following activities were carried out: recruitment, selection and training the volunteers in active citizenship, setting out democracy nests inside public libraries or in community spaces connected to them where citizens can debate issues of community interest, performing a performance audit for the local institutions / services, presenting and debating the results with the audited institutions, agreeing on measures, creating partnerships for follow-up on measures' implementation and further use of the democracy nests’ space. By the end of the project, the project promoter set up 14 democracy nests, trained 212 volunteers in active citizenship and audit performance, performed 28 performance audits, had 16 debates on results with the audited institutions, drafted 1 course on active citizenship, trained 37 librarian trainers in active citizenship, built 14 groups of active citizens. Citizens from 14 county capitals (including Bucharest) have been empowered to be more active, engaged and assertive in their dialogue with the public institutions. At least 98 of them did not have any previous volunteering experience, nor were involved in monitoring the activity of the public administration or local services, or in public dialogue. In 14 county capitals are existing now public and free of charge open spaces, for community meetings. Such spaces can be accessed by any NGO or citizen. 16 local institutions and services started a dialogue with the citizens and assumed 20 measures to increase performance in order to bring benefits to the life of the community.
Summary of bilateral results