THE PARTICIPATORY GROUP Notes on the 2021-02-22 meeting
The 22nd of February of 2021 took place the first meeting of the community of practices The Participatory Group, held online using the Zoom platform.
The following points were discussed:
1. Confirmation by the representatives of the cities and regions of their participation in The Participatory Group.
The Vice Director General of Citizen Participation and Innovation of the Municipality of Madrid gave every representative of local and regional governments the floor so they could confirm their will to be a member of the community of practice.
Local and regional governments that confirm their will to be a member of the community of practice:
1. Andorra La Vella (Andorra) 2. Bogotá (Colombia) 3. Buenos Aires 4. Ciudad de Mexico 5. Cuenca (Ecuador) 6. Jalisco (Mexico) 7. La Habana (Cuba) 8. Lima (Peru) 9. Lisboa (Portugal) 10. Montes de Oca (Costa Rica) 11. Montevideo (Uruguay) 12. Panama (Panama) 13. Porto Alegre (Brazil) 14. Quito (Ecuador) 15. San José (Costa Rica) 16. San Salvador (El Salvador) 17. Santiago (Chile) 18. A Coruña (Spain) 19. Albacete (Spain) 20. Alcobendas (Spain) 21. Alcorcón (Spain) 22. Arganda (Spain) 23. Arroyomolinos (Spain) 24. Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) 25. Córdoba (Spain)
26. Diputación de Gipuzkoa (Spain) 27. Esplugues (Spain) 28. Getafe (Spain) 29. Golmayo (Spain) 30. Granada (Spain) 31. Junta de Castilla y León (Spain) 32. Madrid (Spain) 33. Manzanares el Real (Spain) 34. Murcia (Spain) 35. Palencia (Spain) 36. Región de Murcia (Spain) 37. Roquetas de Mar (Spain) 38. San Sebastián de los Reyes (Spain) 39. Salamanca (Spain) 40. Segovia (Spain) 41. Tudela (Spain) 42. Valdemoro (Spain) 43. Valladolid (Spain) 44. Villanueva del Trabuco (Spain) 45. Paracuellos del Jarama (Spain) 46. Calviá (Spain) 47. Alcalá de Henares (Spain)
Cities that are interested but can’t confirm their participation yet:
1. Hamburg (Germany) 2. Berlin (Germany) 3. Pamplona (Spain) 4. Rivas Vaciamadrid (Spain) 5. Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Spain)
2. Discussion about the internal regulations.
The most relevant points of the draft regulations are discussed.
It is remarked the possibility of other entities participating as collaborators. The goal of the collaborator status is to benefit from their experience and knowledge on citizen participation. The floor is given to those that want to propose their organization as collaborators:
− University of Guadalajara (Mexico) − Fundación Ciudadanos of Argentina − Presidency of the Republic of Uruguay, represented by Ms. Ninoschka Dante
The representative of the Municipality of Arroyomolinos asks about the nature of the regulations and it is explained that they are a minimun operation guidelines and the text will be reviewed in
this sense. The community of practice The Participatory Group is formed as an informal working group and the goal is to agree on some basic operational rules so the group can be functional.
It is agreed to submit a new version of the regulations so the members can propose any modification that they see fit.
3. Election of the members of the Directors Board/Steering Group
It is explained that, according to the present draft regulations, the Commitee will be formed by five cities chosen by the Group.
Members are invited to present themselves as candidates, and it is explained that some of them have already stated their interest: Buenos Aires, Bogotá, San Salvador, Diputación de Gipuzkoa and the city of Murcia. In the session the municipalities of Arroyomolinos, Valladolid and Andorra la Vella also express their interest.
Panama proposes that members of this group change frequently. The members agree.
The municipality of Valdemoro states that smaller municipalities should be represented in teh directing group. The representative from Diputación de Guipuzkoa agrees and informs that they are able to represent municipalities from 200 to 280.000 inhabitants. The municipalitu of Murcia states that theirs is a mid-size city with 54 small districts. Jalisco also declares their willingness to contribute with their experience.
It is agreed to review the regulations considering these contributions.
4. Proposals of future activies and actions.
The municipality of Madrid proposes a workshop on participatory budgets, so they can share their experience in the four editions that they have held.
Tudela supports the idea and suggest the possibility of considering variants like neighbourhoods participatory budgets.
Andorra la Vella is also supportive of the idea and proposes a workgroup on young citizen participation.
Alcorcón also supports the workshop on participatory budgets and proposes the creation of a resource bank with innovative practices, videos, etc.
Representatives of UNED inform about their agreement with the municipality of Madrid through wich they will develop “content pills”, interviews and experts sessions. They can adapt the content to the issues in which the members of the Community are more interested. They also invite members to send them ideas to generate a repository of training and best practices resources.
The municipality of Madrid informs that the resources will be published in the website. Both those of training content and those developed in the Group’s workshops or by its members. The members
that already have interesting content are invited to share this content to be published in the website.
The representative of Quito states their experience with participatory budgets and with sixty five neighbourhood assemblies. She also express their interest in knowing more about joint responsibility of citizens, processes to develop neighbourhood agendas with citizens, and transverse social issues like youth population, cros-culturality, gender parity, at-risk groups, etc.
The representative from Bogota expresess their interest in participatory budgets and also in experiences in the use of technology or formal regulation of processes. To define this issues, he suggests the question: What challenges and learnings do we need to be shared?
The representative of Diputación de Gipuzkoa proposes that training should also be offered to the citizens, so they not only have better information, but are also better trained, prepared and empowered.
The University of Guadalajara proposes to use a questionnaire so members of the group can show their participatory processes, its characteristicas and their main points of interest. The idea is to share this information so members of The Participatory Group can organize working groups on this information. She offers their work, and UNED proposes to organise the capturing of the information.
The municipality of Madrid states that they will write a note summarizing the meeting. Also there will be a private section of the web, accesible only by registered persons, where contact information of members can be securely published. To work on this, they ask all representatives to send their names and email addresses to [email protected]