Beja’s Participatory Budgeting Citizen Forums

In the context of the Participatory Budgeting process, the municipality of Beja organized 2 citizen forums through which the citizens participated in proposing project ideas of basic infrastructure, voting for the priority projects of their neighborhoods, and electing citizens delegates whose mission is to monitor the implementation of the final list of projects. The 2 citizen forums covered the whole municipal zone of Beja, and had been organized on the 2nd  and the 3rd of September 2017, respectively in the following places : OmniSport Sport Hall and the Municipality Hall. A communication campaign preceded the organization of the citizen forums to inform and invite the citizens to take part in the public meetings. Different kind of communication tools had been used during this campaign such as : Flyers, Posters, Banners, car loud-speaker service, radio broadcasts … In this first year / edition of the Participatory Budgeting, 53 citizens participated to present their project ideas related to roads, and to select the priority projects. The result of the organizations of the 2 citizens forums was a list of 15 project ideas of  basic infrastructure. Besides,  the citizens elected 16 citizen delegates in order to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the final list of projects.

Citizen Participation Rate

The citizen forums were organized by the municipality of Beja in collaboration with the local civil society organizations, which provided volunteer members to play the role of “local facilitators” of the Participatory Budgeting. These facilitators ensured, in partnership with the municipality : the implementation of the communication plan to inform and invite the citizen to participate in the citizen forums; the preparation and the organization of the citizen forums; and the support of the citizen delegates in their monitoring and evaluation mission.