2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

Back to list

Zapopan: Citizen Participation Week

Official proposal

07/06/2023 11:06

In recent years, the government of Zapopan, Mexico, has sought to develop citizen capacities for governance, creating the conditions for the discussion of public affairs through education and training on the use of citizen participation mechanisms, empowering the citizen groups and society in general to interact with the Municipal Government under a co-responsibility scheme in decision-making that impacts their communities; Thus, since 2016, six international citizen participation forums have been held.

By 2022, the efforts of the municipal government were focused on holding an event of greater magnitude and repercussions, in which sectors of society that do not usually participate in institutionalized social and neighborhood organizations were included and felt represented, assuming that as a government no way had been found to trigger their participation.

This is how the "Citizen Participation Week" was born, which included events of a different nature (cultural, recreational, educational and assemblies of social organizations), aimed at promoting citizen participation in Zapopan, designed with the aim of bringing the society new models of collaboration, through which governance is consolidated, with the use of innovative and attractive tools that promote the exercise of citizen participation, as well as civically train children and youth, through different training activities, cultural and playful

This event was part of the "Citizen Participation Day in Jalisco", which by decree is celebrated on August 30 of each year.

The experience is completely new in our municipality, since never before have a series of events around citizen participation been brought together, aimed at different sectors of Zapopan society, including those who traditionally do not find participation attractive institutionalized, such as youth, childhood and the artistic community. For this, new ways of bringing the concepts of governance and citizen participation closer to the public were sought, promoting the meeting between different visions and co-creating spaces in which all voices could be heard.

For this project, two types of strategic alliances were made, namely internal and external. In the internal ones, municipal dependencies were involved, who assumed a role of co-organizers and mainly supported the dissemination of the event. In the external ones, there was the collaboration of universities, research centers, civil society organizations, the artistic community, electoral institutions and state agencies, which collaborated with economic resources, support in kind, work and dissemination.

In conclusion, it can be affirmed that the Citizen Participation Week represented a watershed, since it was possible to involve various sectors of society, represented by more than 3,000 people with very varied profiles (members of social and neighborhood organizations, girls and children, youth, the elderly, local public officials and visitors, electoral authorities, representatives of associations and civil society groups, among others).