Kairouan’s Participatory Budgeting Citizen Forums
In the context of the Participatory Budgeting process, the municipality of Kairouan organized 5 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 5 citizen forums covered the whole municipal zone of Kairouan, and had been organized between the 1st and the çth of December 2018, respectively in the following places : Aouled Farhan primary school, Al Mansoura primary school, Abi Zamaa AlBalaoui primary school, Municipality Hall, Nassr City primary school. 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, 690 citizens participated to present their project ideas related to roads, and to select the priority projects. At the end of the 5 citizens forums , the citizens elected 15 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 Kairouan in collaboration with the Women Leaders who played 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.