How do we make participatory and deliberative democracy more inclusive? How do we mainstream and institutionalize these practices, to move from one-off innovations to long-term systemic changes?

People Powered and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) joined forces to address these key challenges at a global convening in Warsaw this May. The event served as both the annual member convening for People Powered and the kick-off meeting for a new NDI program on institutionalizing participatory and deliberative democracy in Central and Eastern Europe.

Thanks to financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy and local coordination by PP member the Shipyard Foundation, we brought together 47 organizations and institutions from 28 countries, for three days of workshops, discussions, meals, and tours of the city and its democratic programs. Participants included civil society advocates, support organizations, researchers, and public officials who are championing participatory and deliberative democracy. Below are three key takeaways.

We launched new resources for making participatory programs more inclusive.

We shared learning and resources on inclusive democracy, and helped people put these tools into practice. When we started People Powered, our members prioritized work to make democracy more inclusive of youth, women, displaced people, and other marginalized communities. Over the past two years we worked with 13 member organizations in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America to synthesize knowledge about what works and produce shared global materials and online courses, thanks to support from NED.

At the convening, we reflected on the learning so far. Blagica Petreski, CEO of Finance Think in North Macedonia, highlighted why we need stronger participatory women in this effort. For example, women have different needs from city budgets - they prioritize things like child care, lighting and safety measures, and public transportation. But without their active participation, spending doesn’t reflect these needs. And without more accessible and visual information on public spending, women participate less.
Greta Ríos, Co-Executive Director of People Powered, shared how new practices of democracy can activate women and young people. When she was working at Ollin, a People Powered member organization, they launched participatory budgeting in the indigenous village of Santa Ana. Beforehand, a council of wise men made decisions. But after designing and then implementing participatory budgeting with the community, women and youth ended up proposing the majority of projects that ultimately got funded. And for the first time, a woman was selected to the village council.

To put these inclusion strategies into practice, we held train-the-trainer sessions, case clinics, and strategy workshops. Participants mapped tactics for training people in their countries, and we collectively problem-solved specific inclusion challenges and ways that the resources could help address them. Next we’ll support dozens of other organizations and governments to make their work more inclusive, through accelerator and mentorship programs.

We planned new programs to mainstream democratic innovations.

We compiled cases, strategies, and resources on mainstreaming participation, to turn democratic innovations into systemic changes in how government works. Jakub Wygnański, president of the Shipyard Foundation board, welcomed us by laying out a key challenge for this work: “The biggest threat to democracy is ignorance.” To combat this challenge, Shipyard organizes national conversations with thousands of people on key policy issues, supports practices such as citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting, and coordinates a national participation forum that brings together 400 practitioners each year to improve practices of participation. “We are big believers in democracy as an effort.”

NDI launched a new program to institutionalize participatory and deliberative democracy, with over a dozen government and civil society representatives from Central and Eastern Europe. Together, they will learn new strategies for building more sustainable local democracy programs, and put these strategies into practice.

People Powered, the Open Government Partnership, the Institute of Public Finance Kenya, and other partners are building a new global curriculum and support program to support this work, and we started compiling content and ideas for the program at a convening workshop. People Powered Co-Executive Director Josh Lerner also hosted a roundtable discussion on a forthcoming white paper, on how we can move from isolated waves of democracy to interconnected democratic ecosystems.

We learned and laughed together.

We learned about democratic innovations and had fun putting them into practice! We started the convening by touring the city, to learn about innovative participatory and deliberative projects across Warsaw. First, we learned about the Warsaw Youth Councils. In each district and citywide, youth ages 13-18 serve in councils that oversee school constitutions, mental health, recreational facilities, and other youth issues. One project that they prioritized was to create a youth ombudsman to uphold youth rights. The city has since set up a Warsaw Youth Ombudsman and ombudsmen in many individual schools, and a bill is now being considered to scale this up to the national level. Students have also launched dialogues with the national Senate on issues such as refugees, sex education, and gender discrimination.

We then toured a community center, school, and urban district to learn about diverse practices of civic engagement. The Wolskie Cultural Center engages neighbors in local decision-making, for programs such as community gardening and social services. The center has also taken on new duties in the past years to welcome Ukrainian refugees and integrate them into the local economy. After lunch we visited the Bednarska School, a democratic school founded in 1989, to learn how it has mixed methods of representative, direct, and participatory democracy. We closed the site visits at Jazdów, a garden community of wood houses in the middle of the city, which has set up its own open government system.

Unlike typical conferences, People Powered convenings are also opportunities for taking joyous action together. We played games, raced imaginary vehicles, and pieced together puzzles. We ate delicious food from a women and migrant led social enterprise, baked pizza in the park, and celebrated on a boat.