Champions of Participation
Our colleagues of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) issued last year the report on the “Champions of Participation” workshop which is an important resource for the University Network and can be downloaded from the web.
John Gaventa of the “Participation, Power and Social Change” team at IDS was the lead convener and facilitator of the workshop, held in May 2007, which brought together 44 people (24 from the UK and 20 from 14 other countries1) involved in local government work. They comprised elected officials, including mayors from the Philippines and Brazil; city councillors from New Orleans and UK authorities; local government officials and other service providers; community activists; workers from local and national NGOs; academics and representatives of central government in the UK and in India.
The aim was to look at the challenges local governments face in responding to growing demands for citizen engagement and more participatory forms of governance. This report summarises the discussions and debates held over a five-day period which included a two-day workshop, two days of visiting sites in the UK of particular interest, and one day of policy dialogue with UK policymakers in the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) and the Department for International Development (DFID).
The experiences and innovative approaches included:
Participatory approaches to budgeting which provide more transparent methods for allocating public resources, involving citizens, elected representatives and local government officials, such as in Porto Alegre in Brazil, Malaga in Spain and Bradford, Newcastle and Salford in the UK;
Processes of participatory planning, which range from public involvement in the construction of small community-based projects, to larger neighbourhood action plans, to strategic area planning and the building of an entire city as in the case of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, or in human rights participatory planning in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina; 
New forms of partnerships between citizens, the government and other stakeholders, as in the UK Local Strategic Partnerships (LSP) and at neighbourhood level through local agreements, or in places like Brazil and the Philippines where citizens and officials sit as ‘co-governors’on key decision-making bodies;
New forms of public scrutiny to hold elected representatives and government officials to account, ranging from local scrutiny groups in Shropshire, citizen-led organizations holding independent public forums with politicians in East London, and citizen monitoring of public tenders in Chile;
New methods of consultation and inclusion, such as community study circles in Wisconsin, USA, and community radio and mobile phone feedback in Nigeria;
Opportunities for citizen participation in service delivery, such as housing, employment and community safety service through neighbourhood renewal and tenant management programmes in the UK; delivery of healthcare in Brazil and education in the Philippines.
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