2024 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

Based on the priorities of the current mandate, in which significant investment in municipal housing stood out, the Municipality of Oeiras intended to develop a differentiated approach to Participatory Budgeting, based on the principles of community development, aimed at and adapted to municipal neighbourhoods, as a way of strengthening cohesion, coexistence and citizenship in these territories, which are globally marked by multiple fragilities.

To this end, the Municipal Neighbourhood Participatory Budget was implemented, a pilot experiment carried out in the Laveiras-Caxias neighbourhood, in which a methodology different from the one usually adopted in previous PB processes was tested.

This methodology had the following characteristics:

• It targeted a micro-territory, ensuring the reinforcement of public investment with the community;
• Prioritised the strengthening of dialogue and social relations between residents and between residents and the local authority;
• Allocated a specific amount of money to the community, leaving it exclusively up to residents to submit proposals and decide on the winning projects through voting;
• Included the hiring of two ambassadors, who received training and a stipend, to support the dynamisation of PB in the area;

It defined that the implementation of the winning projects would be done in coordination with the respective proponents, ambassadors and other stakeholders, as a way to ensure full transparency of the process.

The objective of the good practice was to respond to the existence of civic deserts, understood as communities marked by a lack of opportunities for citizen participation, in which there is a lack of mechanisms to discuss common problems and build forms of collective action, as well as close relationships.

Thanks to this practice, we were able to end the decision-making cycle with an accumulation of learning and training for citizenship on the part of the project's two ambassadors, as well as a high level of participation on the part of the community, both in terms of strengthening the feeling of belonging to their neighbourhood and in terms of strengthening proximity and cooperation between residents and also with the municipal services themselves. These aspects have made it possible to boost the cohesion of the neighbourhood as a community and to establish a closer and more fruitful dialogue with the municipal services.

• https://www.oeiras.pt/-/melhora-teu-bairro-orcamento-participativo (External link)