One of the main overall goal of this project is to engage young people towards a meaningful economic and social participation in their communities and to empower them to take responsibility for community they live in. In order to give young people chance to engage into the community, the need to have opportunities/tools, especially in small municipalities in rural areas. One of the most powerful tool how to engage and empower (not only) young people at local/municipality level is a participatory budgeting.
Participatory budgeting is a democratic process in which community members decide how to spend part of a public budget. It gives people real power over real money. European Parliamentary Research Service study in 2008 estimated that over 8 million European citizens are actively involved in municipal participatory budget and it increases engagement in elections, making people 7% more likely to vote.
Therefore our PlaNET SOEN team has created Municipality Participatory Budget toolkit that is targeted at:
- Small local municipalities – these municipalities does not have enough know- how on how to implement it
- Young active citizens/youth NGOs – our toolkit is addresing young active citizens, who live in small regions in order to present this tool to improve local community
Municipality Participatory Budget deepens democracy, builds stronger communities and creates a more equitable distribution of public resources and thanks to it a new community leaders will arise.
Our toolkit is „easy to read and implement“ document for municipalities and active young citizens, , according to which municipalities will understand it´s importance and this toolkit will give them a path how to do it.
It contains:
1. Reasons and impact on municipality/community of having Municipality participatory budget
2. Rules of Municiplatiy participatory budget for small municipalities
3. An application in order to submit such budget at municipality
The main impacts of Municipality participatory budget are:
– small municipalities in rural areas will provide and introduce new tool into their municipality budget system and this way they will enhance active citizenship in the region
– young people in the region will have a new tool to introduce to the municipality, if they would like to implement the ideas in their villages/municipalities
– participants will gain valuable skills including public speaking, negotiation, facilitation, (etc).Youth participants especially gain confidence, communication skills, and leadership.
– such budget leads to more collaboration between people and government and the participants meet and work directly with elected officials, agency and institution staff, other parts of city government.
– is a gateway to more civic engagement that creates paths to lifelong civic engagement
– participants see the tangible results of investing in their community, often inspiring them to become more involved
To access Municipality Participatory Budget Toolkit click here.
