For ten months now, the Podolian Agency of Regional Development NGO has been providing assistance to Ukrainian cities in implementation of participatory budgeting. The collaboration took place under the USAID MFSI-II Project.
Starting in January 2017, PARD has been providing the educational and promotional support to four partner-cities: Dnipro, Ternopil, Vilnohirsk, and Zhovti Vody. There have been 35 educational events conducted in these cities for their residents In addition, experts provided consultations to local government officials. In general, the events have been attended by 750 participants. Very diverse matters were discussed in those meeting, starting with how to initiate an idea to be implemented as part of city’s participatory budget and complete an application form and to the issues of preventing fraud during the voting procedure and delays in implementation of the winning projects.
Working in localities, the PARD experts realized that the source of the majority of misunderstandings was the lack of information and the process participants’ being unaware whom to contact on specific issues. Irrespective of city size and the amounts allocated by City Councils for implementation of projects, all the cities faced the same problem of lack of effective communication between process participants at each phase of participatory budgeting.
Summing up their experience, the PARD experts have developed a handbook with the recommendations, which will help establish contacts and information sharing between the residents and City Council, mass media and civic activists. The handbook content is organized based on the phases of participatory budgeting. Its text, drawing on the actual experience of Ukrainian cities, provides numerous useful examples and hyperlinks to valuable resources.
The cities, which already have the experience of implementation of participatory budgets, will find in the handbook the methods of rectifying their past mistakes to achieve better results in the future. Those cities, which are only preparing to implement PB, will use the handbook as a guide. This publication will also be useful for Amalgamated Territorial Communities, as participatory budgeting is becoming increasingly more popular among local communities. Participatory budgeting may not necessarily be initiated by mayor or community leader, in many cities, the initiators were common citizens, nongovernmental organizations, and proactive council members
To download the manual follow the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzH0SSm0IZYkcjlnSTdhdC13OVk/view
Glyanec