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.
