2025 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

"Compass is Digital Participation: Nilüfer Neighborhood Committees" makes a significant contribution to both the formation of a unit at the neighborhood scale and the development of a participatory management approach towards digital participation. The Neighborhood Committees, which have a special place in Nilüfer's democratic life, have been setting an exemplary model in Turkey for 15 years. One of the most important features of the committees is that they unite people of different age groups, genders, socio-economic statuses, education levels, and professions to come together around a common goal, and they have the opportunity to evaluate their problems, demands, and opinions regarding their living spaces with the contribution of different perspectives. Innovation in the practice consists of the fact that there is no other example of a unit created with a participatory approach at the neighborhood scale and the first digital local elections in Turkey. It is an important example of both meeting the needs of the neighborhood and direct democracy and participation processes. In the digital elections held with the slogan “Our Compass is Digital Participatio”, both candidacy applications and elections were made completely via the mobile application of Nilüfer Municipality. In this way, a national and international successful example was developed for digital democracy and civil technology locally. A new term began in the Neighborhood Committees in 2024: "digital participation." In this way, all citizens participated intensively in the elections, which were just a click away.

The Neighborhood Committees do not only remain at the neighborhood scale. They take an active role in the strategic planning creation process in order to include all stakeholders in municipal decision-making mechanisms through different participation channels and to reflect stakeholder feedback at all levels of the strategic plan. In the process of creating the 2025-2029 Nilüfer Municipality Strategic Plan, the municipality was the only one that decided on its vision and strategies by discussing them with the citizens.

The Neighborhood Committees also found solutions to problems in the neighborhoods they lived in. They create an impact by organizing actions that have a national level. They achieved significant success in many issues, from the right to education campaign against bussed education, carried out jointly by five neighborhoods, to the closure of the illegal concrete plant and prevention of the quarry capacity increase.

• https://www.niluferkentkonseyi.org/komiteler.php (External link)#