Foundation PACT, Partnership for Community Action and Transformation, Romania, carried out two activities within Citizen Participation Week 2011.

Volunteering – an active citizenship experience! (Kick off meeting of the European project “Future active citizens: volunteering as an exercise of democracy”)
Within the European project “Future active citizens: volunteering as an exercise of democracy”, PACT organized a meeting on September 20th, 2011 at the premises of the National College “Mihai Viteazul” in Bucharest, with approximately 100 young people from six high-schools in the city. This meeting marked the start of the “Future active citizens: volunteering as an exercise of democracy” project which was implemented during September 2011 through to December 2012 by 8 partner organizations from 7 European countries. The event brought together representatives from three Romanian organizations experienced in working with volunteers, and partners in this project: Save the Children Romania, New Horizons Foundation, and PROVOBIS – National Resource Center for Volunteering, as well as teachers and parents.
Throughout the event, high-school students had the opportunity to learn about the work of the NGOs involved in the project and their latest achievements. Through this meeting, PACT wanted to raise awareness on the importance of volunteering and its role in everyday life. In addition, the students learned more about the project activities, objectives and expected results.
The project “Future Active Citizens: volunteering as an exercise of democracy” arises under the program “Europe for Citizens” (2007-2013), which is designed to support a wide range of activities and organizations to promote “European active citizenship” and to involve citizens and civil society organizations in the process of European integration. ”Future Active Citizens: volunteering as an exercise of democracy” is intended for high school students since young people are aware and willing to participate in a European debate on a real issue which is the theme of year 2011 at European level: volunteering. The main objective of the project is to encourage young Europeans to become active citizens, informing them about the meaning and practice of volunteering, based on direct experience of civic and voluntary organisations. It will also allow both voluntary and civic organizations to develop a better understanding of their own action in the European framework, and allow teachers to experiment with a new form of informal learning.

More pictures from the above-mentioned event can be viewed here:

Local NGO partners: Save the Children Romania, New Horizons Foundation, and PROVOBIS – National Resource Center for Volunteering.

International partners:

Cittadinanzattiva, Italy
Fondaca, Italy
The World of NGO’s, Austria
BBE, Germany
Consumer Protection Society, Slovakia
Zavod Nefiks, Slovenia
Rutland Citizens Advice Bureau, UK.

Press release about the event can be found here.

PACT also supports the largest national social involvement project so far: “Let’s Do It, Romania! – Cleaning across the whole country. In one day!” It is a unique social volunteering project, which involves cleaning the entire country of the cities’ outskirts trash, in one single day. In 2010, over 200,000 volunteers participated in the National Cleaning Day, and in 2011 over 250,000 volunteers were involved in achieving these broad actions.

Website: http://www.letsdoitromania.ro; Blog: http://blog.letsdoitromania.ro

The Initiative Group of Cornu village, Prahova County, participated in ecological activities held on September 24^th across the No. 1 National Road (Campina, Cornu, Breaza). The Initiative Group of Cornu village is one of the groups participating in our core program of building community based organizations, which is currently running its 5^th round within the June 2010 – November 2012 time span.

There were 13 volunteers involved in accomplishing this activity. In the first stage, volunteers investigated the waste locations by mapping action and then, on September 24^th 2011, by greening actions they managed to collect 90 garbage bags. The beneficiaries of this activity are on the one hand the participants (13 volunteers), the community members from localities neighbouring the cleaned area – around 50.000 inhabitants (Campina, Cornu, Breaza, Poiana Campina) and those driving on the No. 1 National Road (the most traveled road in Romania).

 

Another example of an organization involved in this action is the Muscel Association for Education and Culture from Campulung town, Arges county – a more experienced local organization, also developed through PACT Foundation’s above mentioned program, in earlier years. More pictures on the Let’s Do It, Romania! Action may be viewed here.

During this years Citizen Participation Week, CREST Resource Center, Romania, carried out activities aiming to raise people’s eco-consciousness and promote sustainable development. The two main activities were:

• A public debate on the theme of sustainable development and NATURA 2000. The aim of this debate was to make people aware of the advantages of NATURA 2000;
• A drawing contest on the theme of biodiversity was organized for primary school children.

Between 19th and 25th September 2011 hundreds of civil organizations ran a campaign for raising awareness on citizen participation and local action at 146 local, small regional and regional events across Hungary. Similarly to previous years, the programme followed two main threads: a national random sample survey, and local and national events.

Survey:
The survey was designed to highlight the level of citizen’s participation in Hungary. HACD collected more than 4200 questioners from across the country and the results are soon to be published on their CPW site!

“Central” events:

1) Press-public roundtable with party politicians about the new Civil Law.
Budapest, Parliament Café
22nd September

Participants:
Ertsey Katalin (LMP), Lendvai Ildikó (MSZP) és Gulyás Gergely (FIDESZ). Civil experts, press representatives.
The event had been live broadcasted, all recordings are available here.

2) Closing event – “Pass it on” and CPW
27th September.

There were two main threads within the common closing event. We invited the winners of the CPW mini-grant to present their CPW activities and results. At the same time, we also invited the PIO movement activist to speak about their CPW events and about the present and possible future of the movement.

Summary of Citizen Participation Week 2011 in Hungary:

• 146 local events had been implemented all over Hungary! The suggested CPW focuses were widely accepted. Most of the programmes were connected to the „What kind of democracy do we want?” focus, the second most popular was the „Freely, with pleasure! (volunteering)”, and the third, with very pro-active activities, was the „Poverty is dummy? Give it a voice!” focus.
• Over 4200 questionnaires were collected.
• The events scored over 80 media mentions (Television programmes and interviews, print media, online media). For more information: http://reszvetelhete.net
• CPW was more successful this year in involving politicians. The campaign was described in Parliament speech; it was successful in getting together the representatives of the 3 main political parties in relation with the Civil Law; there was a strong push on Budapest’s 8th district decision-makers; dozens of events had been implemented with the participation of local leaders/politicians; a representative of the year was again elected in Szekszárd;
• As a new model, this year a CPW mini-grant was offered to help support around 30 local actions (flash-mobs, neighbourhood infrastructure renewals, media actions, meetings etc.)
• New Hungarian CPW online platform was created and it is not just a website and blog. It collects all necessary functions and interactive solutions, it is able to handle content management and communication innovations (event management, media-share, mapping functions etc.) – http://reszvetelhete.net
• The “Pass it on” movement and CPW met again. Common content (volunteering), common local activities, and common closing conference created organic link between the two initiatives.

Main Organizers:

Civil College Foundation
Hungarian Institute for Culture
Association for Developing Community Involvement
Vocational Network for Supporting Community Initiatives
Hungarian Institute for Culture and Art

Results, reports, pictures, implemented programmes, background information on http://reszvetelhete.net

During Citizen Participation Week 2011, the Centres for Civic Initiatives, Bosnia & Herzegovina, organized their first CPW street stand in Bijeljina, in the Republika Srpska region. An article about their activity appeared in EUROBLIC, a widely read regional newspaper. Please check it out below, followed by the English translation.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011
www.euroblic.ba
The campaign of the Centres for Civic Initiatives in Bijeljina on animation of citizens
INFORMING ABOUT THE FUNCTIONING OF GOVERNMENTS: The goal is greater participation of citizens in the supervision of their local government.

The adage that people have the government they deserve proves to be correct in practice every day, and it shows that it is crucial that citizens change their attitude towards the community in order for a fundamental change in society to be made, said the activists of the Centres for Civic Initiatives yesterday in Bijeljina.
As part of the “Week of Civic Participation,” yesterday they set up a street stand in the centre of Bijeljina at which citizens could express their views on the functioning of local and state authorities.
The goal of the campaign is greater participation of citizens in the decision-making process at local level, because only in this way the common good can be achieved. Citizens generally do not know that there are legitimate mechanisms which can influence the decisions of government such as citizens’ assemblies, petitions, and even peaceful protests, said Obren Bjelošević, CCI activist. None of local officials joined the activists in the main city square yesterday, and citizens were more interested in specific issues than in petitions and assemblies.
Maja Buha, an attorney, says that young people are most interested in how to get a job: I am interested in the announced program of hiring of beginner employees. If government and employers do not recognize their quality, young people will leave this country, she says.
The activists of CCI, however, claim that citizens need to recognize that they are “a decision-making factor”, because only in this way can they fight for their rights, even for the fundamental right to work.

This year, Agora Central Europe promoted Citizen Participation Week through three different events in order to motivate different social groups, including local government politicians, NGOs and students, to get involved in the project.

RNDr. Ivana Bursikova, the director of Agora CE, has been involved in a nationwide program called “The Educated Local Politician” which is organised by the Union of Municipalities (supported by ESF – OPLZ) in the Czech Republic following a Norwegian model. The program involves a series of events encouraging local politicians to seek mutual understanding and strengthen their competence to better serve their community. The program is also designed to help local governments share their know-how and experiences using interactive methods. As a certified lecturer, RNDr. Bursikova had the responsibility of leading a training seminar for nine mayors from various Czech cities. The aim of the seminar was to increase their knowledge and skills in participation methods – ways of communication between citizens and the municipal council. During the seminar she also explained the meaning and importance of Citizen Participation Week.

PhDr. Ing. Pavel Mička led a seminar for Georgian NGOs visiting the Czech Republic as part of the Demas Network. The project, supported through Visegrad funds, brought representatives of various Georgian NGOs to the Czech Republic to learn about participation and strategic planning. Pavel Mička promoted CPW and talked about the impact it can have in terms of participation and democratization. The meeting led by PhDr. Mička was very successful in promoting CPW as the seminar was designed to inform the Georgian representatives about the practical use of CPW. The Citizen Participation Week project was explained to all representatives in full detail. They were informed about the benefits of the project and learned about the practices executed within the week.

Mgr. Eliška Chomátová led a two day event for students from across the country. Students took part in a debating competition called “Way to Parliament”, which was designed to develop students’ debating skills and teach them about the art of argumentation. Through a series of debates, the students were encouraged to learn to express their opinions efficiently in order to be able to influence the public sector.
As part of her project, Mgr. Chomátová has led a series of debating exercises to promote Citizen Participation Week. Students learned about the importance of participation and public involvement as well as the importance of democracy.

This year, “Millennium” Association for Education and Research has been working on a project for the promotion and development of argotourism in the rural regions of Gegharkuniq and Vayots Dzor, Armenia.

The main objectives of the project are:

• cross-regional cooperation and participatory planning of tourism development strategies;
• supporting the development of SME and establishing new SME in the argotourist sphere;
• and involving the local community in the strategy implementation processes.

As part of this last objective, Millennium has been working towards raising awareness about the role of the community in the maintenance of tourist resources in the region with an emphasis on the role of community mobilization which would create a better environment for agrotourist households development. Some of Mullennium’s activities included promoting volunteering in schools and organizing garbage disposal events with school pupils of the Eghegnadzor region communities (Arpi, Areni, Shatin, Artabuynk, Sali, Vernashen) and were conducted throughout Citizen Participation Week. A series of lectures on volunteering and maintaining community resources were held in the Artabuyn, Shatin and Vernashen communities. Another activity involved a joint expedition along the selected tourist track together with community members and local NGOs.