2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The Universidad Nacional de Rosario  (External link)(UNR) is a community of more than 100,000 people composed of twelve Faculties and three Middle Schools located in the city of Rosario (Argentina). Its population is divided into faculties (teaching, non-teaching, graduates and students), which are usually represented in a corporate manner in the university co-government bodies. Created in 1968, it is one of the most outstanding public universities in the country. 

Since 2020, it has been managing the Participatory Budget (PPUNR) (External link) structured from two independent and simultaneous participation processes: 1. PB Faculties, which involves people from the four faculties, the twelve Faculties and other departments of the University; and 2. PB Schools: where each of the schools operates as an independent universe. In the latter, more than 5,000 young people between 13 and 18 years of age are eligible to participate. 

Each of these four PB processes have been developed simultaneously and organized in three stages:

1. Forums (university and school), in which people from the university community propose ideas to intervene on various thematic axes; dialogue among themselves to enrich these ideas; and present themselves as planners, if they so wish. 

2. University Commission and School Councils, where planners meet to transform ideas into feasible projects, together with technical personnel from the University. 

3. The UNR Decides and The School Decides, when the university community chooses the projects to be implemented during 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 foreseen, the pandemic went through the beginning of the PPUNR and it was successfully sustained virtually in 2020 and hybrid in 2021 and 2022, guaranteeing the deliberation and co-creation of projects, which is rare in digital experiences of participation. Among its main objectives, the following stand out:

• 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 direct participation instruments 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 budget allocated, the UNR is not only a pioneer but also stands out in terms of Participatory Educational Budgets in Argentina and the world. With a cross-cutting gender perspective throughout the cycle and accessibility criteria on its website, it is an inclusive and revitalizing process that is very well evaluated by the community itself through a permanent monitoring process. 

The creation of a group of referents that promote the policy in each territory of the university stands out as a mechanism for the sustainability of the process whose internal decisions are also participatory. Few participatory experiences were developed in the middle of the pandemic, many less emerged during it and have continuity today as in the case of the PPUNR.

More information: https://presupuestoparticipativo.unr.edu.ar/ (External link)