2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

Project Workshop with Young Participation is a competition that emerged with the slogan "Young people decide the future of the city" in line with the principle of "Produce - Decide - Apply". This competition is organized for young people between the ages of 15 and 30 to produce projects that will facilitate the life of the people of Sakarya, contribute to the city and move the city forward with more than one project in 6 different categories. The Categories are: "Environment - Water Management", "Architectural - Urban Design", "Transportation - Urban Mobility", "Youth, Sports - Culture", "Social Services", "Digitalization".

It is aimed to implement practices that support the personal and social development of young people, to enable them to realize their own potential, to ensure the active participation of young people in decision-making and implementation processes and in all areas of social life, to strengthen coordination and cooperation between local government and young people, and to support innovative ideas of young people. 

The workshop was held in five different stages:

1. Gathering of projects and ideas. The first promotional meeting of the project was in the form of a digital launch. Nearly 2,000 students attended the online launch. Face-to-face introductory meetings were held in high schools. For the promotion of the project, brochures and posters were left at the places (university cafeterias, libraries, dormitories) where the young people who constitute the target group of the project are located.

2. Preliminary evaluation. A total of 89 projects were submitted to the competition. Projects that met the application criteria in the preliminary evaluation (application made on time, filling the application form correctly, uploading the application form and its annexes to the system) moved on to the next stage.

3. Jury evaluation. The jury commission consists of 13 people. Those people; There is one student representative from SAU and SUBU, 1 project expert from the East Marmara Development Agency, 1 representative from the City Council Youth Assembly, and 8 managers and 1 head of department from the relevant areas of the Municipality. ç

4. Citizen voting. At the end of the jury evaluation, the 10 projects with the highest score were submitted to the public vote. In this process, the voting numbers were shared with the citizens. 15.000 TL monetary award and Sakarya Urbanism Award were given to the project that was selected first as a result of the voting. Each other project participating in the voting was given 3 thousand TL as a participation incentive award.

5. Implementation workshop. It is the implementation phase of the first selected project as a result of the citizen vote. The project owner and relevant experts will come together in the workshop and the project will be budgeted and implemented in 2023.

At the end of the project, positive feedback was received from all the young people who participated in the workshop that the whole process was carried out in a participatory, transparent and fair manner. Based on these feedbacks, it was decided to make the Project traditional and to be held every year. 

• More information: https://www.sakarya.bel.tr/ (External link)