2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

The Maia City Council, within the scope of the MaiaINCLUI Project, promoted social inclusion work with a number of communities through innovation programs, social experimentation and territorial animation. The project resorted to the application of participatory methodologies and mobilization of local actors to identify problems and create new collective responses and, thus, implemented a civic laboratory: Labic MaiaINLCUI - Laboratory of Citizenship for Inclusion.

LABIC MaiaINCLUI was implemented in two different areas of Maia, the Brisa neighborhood (Pedrouços) and the Anta neighborhood (Câstelo da Maia – Gemunde).

The experience was implemented in Bairro da Brisa, in an urban area of the parish of Pedrouços, which is made up of 24 prefabricated wooden single-family buildings arranged along the street. This was based on a complex social and physical context, either because of the social framework, where the relationship between residents is fragile and sometimes tense, or because of the physical conditions of the built space, with structural problems arising from its provisional nature of pre-built dwellings. -manufactured or the maintenance of their outdoor spaces. From the outset, involvement and consultation practices were implemented based on individual contact, house to house, between the Laboratory team and the community, seeking to assess the networks of relationships and their nature and, in a cautious and gradual manner, seek means for its reactivation or reconstruction based on the wishes and suggestions of the residents who were involved.

The Civic Laboratory, implemented in the neighborhood of Anta, is located in the parish of Castêlo da Maia, former parish of Gemunde, in the municipality of Maia. The neighborhood consists of four buildings of prefabricated wooden houses and six shacks, located at the back of the old Polidesportivo. This initiative started from the identification of the need to promote social inclusion and find ways to mitigate the needs associated with the poverty of the community that inhabits the neighborhood, through its involvement through participatory methodologies. A laboratory that intends to promote paradigm shifts and the empowerment of a socially fragile community has had to assume experimentation as a fundamental practice to achieve results, at first difficult to envision, assuming the programming of activities session by session. This project provoked a change in the dynamics that can be seen in the neighborhood, as well as reinforcing the activation of partnership networks with institutions. As expected, there was also a process of empowerment, appreciation and inclusion of a community.

https://www.cm-maia.pt/  (External link)

https://www.facebook.com/labicMAIAINCLUI/?locale=hi_IN (External link)

https://www.publico.pt/2023/02/26/local/reportagem/sonho-vida-normal-ouvir-ciganos-anta-senha-revolucao-2040189 (External link)