Mahdia’s Participatory Budgeting Citizen Forums
In the context of the Participatory Budgeting process, the municipality of Mahdia organized 3 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 4 citizen forums covered the whole municipal zone of Mahdia, and had been organized between the 8th and the 15th of December 2018, respectively in the following places : Al Zahraa, Al Madina, Hiboun. 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, 433 citizens participated to present their project ideas related to roads, and to select the priority projects. At the end of the 3 citizens forums , the citizens elected 9 citizen delegates in order to monitor and evaluate the implementation of the final list of projects.
Citizen Participation Rate
Mahdia’s citizen delegates forum
After the organization of the citizen forums of the Participatory Budgeting process, the municipality of Mahdia organized, on the 21st of December 2018, the citizen delegates forum which gathered the 9 citizen elected delegates. The role of the delegates was to sort, by priority, the projects 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 feasible. Besides, the local facilitators of the Participatory Budgeting participated in 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 Mahdia (400.000 Tunisian Dinars for the roads and pavements, public lightening and embellishment of the city), the citizen delegates reached a consensus on a list of the projects. Moreover, the citizen delegates created monitoring committees in order to supervise and evaluate the implementation of the decided projects, as mentioned in the following documents.
Citizen projects’ location visit in Mahdia
At the end of the Citizens’ Forum series, the municipality of Mahdia organized on the 20th of December 2018 a visit to the location of the projects voted by the citizens and approved by the technical service of the municipality for their technical and administrative feasibility.
This visit was made in the presence of the 9 elected citizen delegates, the local participatory budgeting facilitators and representatives of Mahdia municipality’s technical service.
This visit covered the sites of the 9 voted projects of basic infrastructure.
Training of Media Professionals in Participatory Budgeting and Gender
In the framework of the project “Word to Women”, the Associative Action organized training workshops in Participatory Budgeting and Gender, in favor of media professionals from partner municipalities.
These trainings were held between the months of November and December 2018, and were provided by expert trainers: Kouraich Jaouahdou ( Participatory Budgeting expert) and Monia Gastli (gender expert).
The purpose of these trainings was to help media professionals (journalists and bloggers) understand what kind of media coverage could be provided during the various phases of implementation of the participatory approach that is programmed in their cities.
