2021 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The Youth Participatory Budget of Lagoa (YPB) - Azores is a project of the municipality for the citizens. The mission is to achieve the greatest involvement of young people in their community, through participatory democracy. Young people aged between 12 and 30 present ideas that are voted on by the whole community and implemented annually for the benefit of the municipality. Throughout the five editions, the YPB has marked the community, with the activation of schools, clubs, IPSS and informal groups in the dissemination phase with a view to receiving proposals. The technical analysis is the responsibility of a commission, composed of members of the Municipal Youth Council and municipality technicians, also associated with the project's dissemination phase. At this stage, the proposals are worked on with the proponents in order to complement them with elements that make them more robust and community-oriented, thus taking the form of a project. The voting phase has registered a growing adhesion, as a result of simplified voting via web and sms and voting actions for children from 8 to 12 years old, for working class and day centres. In order to achieve this mission, the external visibility of the process is assumed to be fundamental, and a communication campaign has been developed that includes the use of the image of each young finalist proponent in the decoration of public spaces, municipal vehicles and digital disclosures. This measure has an enormous impact and a multiplying effect that benefits the process of participative democracy. The projects of the last four editions have already been fully implemented, enjoying wide dissemination and public recognition. This fact contributes to the growing association of the community with the YPB and is reflected in the participation rates, which in the 5th edition were the highest ever.