The inter-municipal seminar of the Participatory Budgeting_2014
The Associative Action organized organized, on the 17th of October 2014 in Tunis, the first Participatory Budgeting inter-municipalities seminar. The seminar gathered the first 4 municipalities which implemented the Participatory Budgeting in Tunisia (la Marsa, Menzel Bourguiba, Tozeur et Gabès) in order to sustain the process, exchange experiences and create the first Tunisian inter-municipal network of the Participatory Budgeting.
The seminar resulted in the signature of inter-municipal support agreement between the 4 participant municipalities, in terms of the implementation of the Participatory Budgeting process. Moreover, The Associative Action exploited the opportunity to present its Manual of the Participatory Budgeting, which describes in details all the steps and the activities of the process and how to implement them (see document below).
Training of the citizen delegates of Gabes
In order to ensure the success of the monitoring mission, the Associative Action organized a training session for the citizen delegates of the municipality of Gabes on the implementation process of the municipal projects. The technical services of the municipality as well as the local facilitators of the Participatory Budgeting attended this session as well.
The training presented all the administrative and on-the-ground steps related to the implementation of municipal projects. By the end of the training, every citizen delegate received a copy of a monitoring and evaluation guide of the municipal projects, edited by the Associative Action in collaboration with the technical services of the municipality.
Gabes’s citizen delegates forum
After the organization of the citizen forums of the Participatory Budgeting process, the municipality of Gabes organized, on the 9th of Mai 2014, the citizen delegates forum which gathered the 24 citizen elected delegates. The role of the delegates was to sort, by priority, the 24 projects of the city embellishment voted by the citizens based on the Participatory Budgeting principles, specifically the principles of equity and solidarity.
The technical service of the municipality attended the forum in order to provide necessary technical and administrative information to the citizen delegates. The financial services took also part in this forum to provide the preliminary estimated cost of each project voted by the citizens, and which is technically realizable. Besides, the local facilitators of the Participatory Budgeting participated the logistical preparation of this forum, as well as, to provide support to the citizen delegates in their work.
Based on all these pieces of information, and according to the budget allocated to the projects of the Participatory Budgeting process from the municipality of Gabes (200.000 Tunisian Dinars for the city embellishment), the citizen delegates reached a consensus on a list of 8 projects over 24 to be implemented by the municipality. Moreover, the citizen delegates created monitoring committees in order to supervise and evaluate the implementation of the 8 decided projects, as mentioned in the following documents.
Gabes’s Participatory Budgeting Citizen Forums
In the context of the Participatory Budgeting process, the municipality of Gabes organized 8 citizen forums through which the citizens participated in proposing project ideas of the city embellishment, 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 4 citizen forums covered the whole municipal zone of Gabes, and had been organized between the 29thof March and the 27th of April 2014, respectively in the following neighborhoods : El Manara city, Boulbeba city, El Amal city, Essalem city, Beb Bhar and Jara city, El Menzel and Mohamed Ali city, Tbalbou city, and Bouchema city. 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, 308 citizens participated to present their project ideas related to the city embellishment, and to select the priority projects. The result of the organizations of the 8 citizen forums was a list of 24 project ideas of the city embellishment. Besides, the citizens elected 24 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 Gabes 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.
