2022 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"
16th Edition
The National University of Rosario (UNR) is a community of more than 100,000 people made up of twelve Faculties and three Middle Schools located in the city of Rosario (Argentina). Its population is divided into cloisters (teacher, non-teacher, graduates and students) usually represented corporately in the university co-government bodies. Created in 1968, it is one of the most outstanding public universities in the country.
Since 2020, the Participatory Budget (PPUNR) has been managed, structured from two independent and simultaneous participation processes: 1. PB Faculties, which involves people from the four cloisters, the twelve Faculties and other dependencies of the University; and 2. PB Schools: where each one of the schools works as an independent universe. In the latter, there are more than 5,000 young people between the ages of 13 and 18 who are eligible to participate.
Each of these four PB processes have been developed simultaneously, organized in three stages:
1. Forums (university and school), in which people from the university community propose ideas to intervene on various thematic axes; they dialogue among themselves to enrich those ideas; and present themselves as planners, if they so wish.
2. University Commission and School Councils, where designers meet to transform ideas into feasible projects, together with technical staff from the University.
3. UNR Decide and La Escuela Decide, when the university community chooses the projects to be implemented within the following year, through a secret and equal voting system that is carried out through a digital platform.
Although a face-to-face PB was expected, the pandemic caused the start of the PPUNR and it was successfully held virtually in 2020 and hybrid in 2021 and 2022, guaranteeing the deliberation and co-creation of projects, which is rare in engaging digital experiences. Among its main objectives are:
- Strengthen university citizenship with a collective-identity sense that builds and promotes ties between the different academic units.
- Include those who make up the community in decision-making and the development of institutional policies.
The incorporation of instruments of direct participation such as the PB reinforces and revitalizes the university co-government bodies and is a way of expanding the democratic canon. Due to the size of its community and the allocated budget, the UNR is not only a pioneer but also stands out in terms of Participatory Educational Budgets in Argentina and the world. With a transversal gender perspective throughout the cycle and accessibility criteria on its website, it is an inclusive and revitalizing process that is highly evaluated by the community itself based on a permanent monitoring process.
The creation of a group of referents who promote politics in each territory of the university stands out as a mechanism for sustaining the process whose internal decisions are also participatory. Few participation experiences were developed in the middle of the pandemic, much less arose in it and currently have continuity as in the case of the PPUNR.
More information:
https://youtube.com/shorts/js9Vr5Tpe9s?feature=share
https://presupuestoparticipativo.unr.edu.ar/
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