2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The participatory budget is part of the good governance of our territories. It is a process of direct democracy, voluntary and universal, during which the population can freely debate and decide on the budget of their locality and on public development policies. Citizen participation is not limited to voting, but goes much further. Four basic principles underpin it and justify its application: (i) redirecting public resources to the poorest; (ii) building relationships of trust between communities and citizens; (iii) rebuilding social ties and the general interest; (iv) inventing a new democratic culture and mobilizing a sense of citizenship. 

Through the participatory budget mechanism, the departmental council of Vélingara (Senegal) has set itself the objective of opening up to the community for good governance in a dynamic of progress and the fight against poverty. 

In particular, the Participatory Budget has contributed significantly to:

• strengthening social and territorial cohesion
• making economic orientation more coherent
• attenuating development disparities in the department
• rationalizing the management of financial resources
• reducing inter- and intra-zonal disparities 
• to promote competitive spaces in the territorial collectivities
• develop inter- and intra-community communication infrastructures;
• fight against poverty and social vulnerability
• to protect the environment and natural resources
• developing intercommunity and addressing food security and resilience issues.

The general approach is as follows:

• Launching ceremony (information, awareness raising about the project)
• Organization of forums in the three districts with all development stakeholders (administrative authorities, mayors, decentralized and deconcentrated technical services, community organizations, civil society, etc.). 
• Creation of a departmental steering committee;
• Identification in the districts (in the presence of all local stakeholders) of priority development areas and actions in relation to the specificities of each zone;
• Organization of a departmental forum (gathering delegates from the 3 districts) to validate the identified priority areas and actions;
• Participatory budget preparation, validation by elected representatives, implementation;
• Monitoring and evaluation of the budget implementation in the field (in particular, the work carried out in terms of investment);
• Creation of a space for citizen dialogue and interpellation (EDIC) for citizen control.

The forums were an opportunity for the Vélingara Departmental Council and its partners to support the administrative authorities, mayors, technical services and communities in prioritizing the institution's actions to respond effectively to the concerns of the grassroots population. 

A good harvest of relevant and reliable quantitative and qualitative information was collected, enabling the problems of the localities to be clearly identified.