local government

This brief overview of the concept of citizens' juries (CJ) contains extracts from a new handbook Teach yourself citizens' juries; A handbook by the DIY steering group. Using a series of cartoons as a guide, it takes you through a step-by-step process on how to plan, implement, and follow-up a CJ. The cartoons illustrate what a CJ is, why you might want to have one, what the main ingredients of a CJ are, and how to get started.

This article describes the participatory method æBarangay Development Planning through Participatory Situational Analysis, Planning, Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation (BDP-Participatory SAPIME) used by ECPG (Empowering Civic Participation in Governance), an NGO working on village-level with local governance in the Philippines. The article gives a brief background to legislation and structures related to peopleÆs participation in governance, and goes on to explain the methodology the work of ECPG in Quezon City to improve urban participatory local development planning.

This article briefly describes the experiences and lessons of community based planning (CBP) in two pilot districts (Gwanda and Chimanimani) in Zimbabwe. The CCP process created the need to revitalise the planning and development structures in the pilot districts and engaged government throughout the process, which resulted in the mainstreaming of community empowerment principles in the decentralisation of the government of Zimbabwe.

Colombia's new Constitution of 1991 gave the status of citizen and participant to a people which had not historically enjoyed it. This implied the need for citizenship education and formation to enable people to take advantage of their new status. Many non-governmental organizations in Colombia immediately rose to the challenge. Some of these were newcomers to this field. Others, among them the Instituto Popular de Capacitaci¾n (IPC, Popular Training Institute), came to this task with a long history of working to deepen democracy in a range of ways.

This article considers the Sustainable Development Observatories of Manizales, Colombia, as an example of shared management and citizen participation in local sustainable development. The success has been due to the active participation of the city municipality, university, trade unions, institutions, NGOs and community organisations. The purpose of the observatories is to support local urban governance by updating economic, social, and environmental indicators which are formulated by citizens and technical staff.

This article considers the Sustainable Development Observatories of Manizales, Colombia, as an example of shared management and citizen participation in local sustainable development. The success has been due to the active participation of the city municipality, university, trade unions, institutions, NGOs and community organisations. The purpose of the observatories is to support local urban governance by updating economic, social, and environmental indicators which are formulated by citizens and technical staff.

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) has a long history in development planning in less developed countries. In recent years, PLA approaches have also been promoted for participatory development planning in rural areas of industrialised countries with functioning democratic institutions. This paper draws on experiences of applying participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) in a one-week planning workshop in M³hlen, Northern Germany and asks whether or nor PRA is an appropriate instrument for participatory community development in societies with functioning local democratic institutions.

This article depicts the participative consultation of the Zbojna Commune for an EU-funded community development programme. In 1998, Zbojna Commune, situated in the North-East part of Poland, took part in the EU ECOS Overture Integrated programme as a partner and test area. From the beginning, it was determined by the EU Programme that plans were to be developed for the Zbojna Commune in three directions: developing agri-tourism; increasing milk production; improving the natural environment.

This article reviews a project in Pune, India, where 400 community toilet blocks have been built through a partnership between municipal government, NGOs and community-based organisations. In 1999, the Municipal commissioner sought to greatly increase the scale of public toilet construction and to ensure that toilets more appropriate than those previously constructed by the municipality got built, by inviting local NGOs to make bids for toilet construction and maintenance.

This article describes the process by which Rural Councils in Mali, establish local development plans in a participatory manner in order to qualify for a grant from a government controlled capital development fund, l'Agence National d'Investissement des CollectivitÚs Territoriales (ANICT). The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) has taken responsibility for supporting the decentralization process in the Mopti region f Mali, and in 200 it established the Projet d'Appui aux Communes Rurales de Mopti (PACRP).