Ariana’s citizen delegates forum
After the organization of the citizen forums of the Participatory Budgeting process, the municipality of Ariana organized, on the 21st of October 2017, the citizen delegates forum which gathered the 16 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 Ariana (4.000.000 Tunisian Dinars for the roads and pavements, public lightening, embellishment of the city, management of rainwater, and local sports fields), the citizen delegates reached a consensus on a list of 36 projects over 50 to be implemented by the municipality.
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 Ariana
At the end of the Citizens’ Forum series, the municipality of Ariana organized on the 20th of October 2017 a visit to the location of the projects voted by the citizens and aprouved by the technical service of the municipality for their technical and administrative feasibility.
This visit was made in the presence of the 16 elected citizen delegates, the local participatory budgeting facilitators and representatives of Ariana municipality’s technical service.
This visit covered the sites of the 50 voted projects of basic infrastructure.
Training of local facilitators on the Participatory Budgeting in Ariana
On the 28th of August 2017, the Associative Action organized a training session for the members of local CSOs in Ariana to become local facilitators of Participatory Budgeting.
The role of the local facilitators is to collaborate with the members of the local authorities to successfully implement the awareness and communication campaign aimed to invite the citizens to participate in the citizen forums of the PB, as well as to organize the citizen forums (moderating the debate between municipal officers and citizens, facilitation of the citizens work groups, organization of the voting and election process related to the citizen projects ideas and citizen delegates).
Communication training session in Ariana
In order to implement the communication campaign properly, the Associative Action organized a 2 days training session related to the awareness and communication campaign, for the members of the municipality of Ariana, as well as the members of local CSOs, between the 9th and 11th of June 2017.
During the training, the Associative Action trained the participants on the best practices to use with citizens, and proposed a design model for the communication tools. This model was the subject of debate and consultation between the members of the municipality and those of the local CSOs.
By the end of the training, a communication plan was developed identifying the quantity of communication tools that will be provided by Associative Action, the distribution of roles between the members of the municipality and the local CSOs for the execution of the awareness and communication campaign, as well as the dates and the deadline for each activity of the campaign.
