2022 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"
16th Edition
Alcoi: Education for participation - Children's Budgets: investment proposals for the improvement of the city
The Department of Participatory Democracy and Transparency of the Alcoi City Council, in collaboration with the Department of Education, carries out annually during the first semester, the project "Educación para la Participación – Presupuestos Participativos Infancia (Education for Participation - Children's Participatory Budgets)", aimed at raising awareness and promoting participation citizenship for young people of school age.
In the 2021 financial year, eleven educational centers and representatives of the Consell Local d'Infància i Adolescència (CLIA) participated: approximately 480 students.
The city council allocates a budget item to this project of 25,000 euros to carry out the viable proposals selected by the students, until completing the amount allocated for this purpose: 5,000 euros for current spending and 20,000 euros for investment proposals.
Background
The Convention on the Rights of Children, an international treaty of the United Nations signed on November 20, 1989, is the reference par excellence to promote and stimulate the participation of children, fundamentally in its articles 12, 13, 14 and 15. The first of them establishes the right of girls and boys to express their opinion in all matters that affect them. Article 13 is the one in which the convention dedicates to freedom of expression. Article 14 enshrines “the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”. Finally, article 15 affirms “the right to freedom of association and the freedom to hold peaceful meetings.”
Participation requires an educational, training, gradual and comprehensive process, as well as an ideological framework that defines the guiding principles of decision-making, especially if they affect the common good, as it is in this case. This process optimizes its results if it begins in childhood and if it is structured as a progressive itinerary that adapts both to age and to the characteristics of each territory.
Participatory budgets are a form of citizen participation in the public management of the municipality, through which all the neighbors can participate and make decisions in the preparation of the municipal public budget.
In the case of children's participatory budgets, we understand that their aim is the same as that of adults: they are also full-fledged citizens and, consequently, they must participate and decide. Not only listen to their voice, but create the conditions so that they can analyze, propose and decide for themselves.
The “Education for Participation - Children's Participatory Budgets” program began to be carried out by the city council in 2017, with a budget item destined for current expenses for the execution of the activities that the participating students proposed and selected.
As a novelty, in 2020 it was agreed to expand the program with an investment budget for the improvement and creation of urban infrastructures that were proposed and selected by the participants.
In 2021, the presentation of the results of this program by the students themselves to the members of the city council in the Municipal Plenary Session was carried out as a pioneering activity, in which they participated to present the development of the campaign as well as their own conclusions. Due to the health situation in 2021, students participated virtually. However, for this year 2022, students will be invited so that they can participate in person.
More information:
https://www.facebook.com/alcoiparticipa/
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