People Powered kicks off first regional hubs
/A feature that distinguishes People Powered is its annual, collective goal-setting, in which members nominate, then vote on, the projects we should implement the following year. One of the winning projects selected for 2022 was the creation of “regional hubs” to better address region-specific challenges and opportunities. We have since worked with our members to launch two hubs, in Francophone Africa, coordinated by People Powered member ASSOAL, and in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Balkans, coordinated by Participation Factory.
CEE and Balkans
“The CEE and Balkan region spans over 19 countries, with widely varying degrees of democracy consolidation and public participation,” explains Katya Petrikevich, cofounder and international director of Participation Factory, a People Powered member organization from the Czech Republic. “In some of the countries, citizen engagement and public participation are a completely new topic, while other countries have significant experience with it. The purpose of the hub is to help us learn from and support each other.”
Among the goals of the CEE and Balkans hub are to:
Map regional needs and opportunities, while fostering cooperation and know-how exchange.
Develop a shared vision and action plan for deepening participatory democracy.
Raise funds to sustain and grow regional hub activities beyond the first year.
Grow the number of active People Powered members in the region.
“We know that elections alone don’t deliver the democracy that people want or need,” says Katya. “Unfortunately, the resources and activities developed to foster democracy often don’t include or are not responsive to the unique needs of CEE and the Balkans. When the needs and contexts of other actors differ from ours so dramatically, it is hard to bring their solutions back home.”
The CEE and Balkans hub officially launched in September, and to date has 12 members. Each participated in an in-depth interview, needs-prioritization survey and workshop to create a comprehensive overview of members’ contexts and hopes for the hub. The main challenges they identified include fragile democracies, mistrust of governmental institutions, lack of political will, and a low level of know-how related to public participation among local authorities.
To address these issues, members suggested the following activities:
Assessment of members’ priorities and levels of preparedness for public participation, with special emphasis on climate change and conflict resolution.
Adaptation of civic-tech and other resource tools/materials to the context and languages of the Balkans and CEE.
Skill- and knowledge-building workshops.
Match of members with peers that want to work on the same challenges, for know-how exchange and collaboration.
Cooperative grantseeking.
Note that the CEE and Balkans hub is open for others to join; in fact, Katya says 39 other potential members have already been identified. For more information contact katya@participationfactory.com.
Francophone Africa
The second pilot this year is focused on Francophone Africa, in which the countries share French as the official language. The countries that are part of this region are Cameroon, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
‘’These countries live with a number of challenges, like poverty, low participation of citizens in public affairs, and discrimination against youth and women,” explains KAMSEU Ghislain from ASSOAL, hub coordinator. “This is in part because participatory democracy is not really established. We are still far away from it.’’
The Francophone Africa hub was launched on September 20, and as a first step, ASSOAL has set up collaboration tools such as WhatsApp and Google groups. Currently, it is mapping and identifying members’ primary challenges and the opportunities within Francophone Africa, as well as planning information-exchange sessions.