Participatory budget is a powerful tool for local governments to educate and engage their local communities. In this blog post, you can learn more about the participatory budgeting process.
What is a participatory budget?
Participatory budgeting has recently become a buzzword in democracy circles but not many people know what exactly does this term mean. To put it simply, a participatory budget is a policy-making tool that involves community members in the allocation of public funds. The local government asks their citizens to help them define where and how much of a share of the city budget should go.
Participatory budgeting enables residents to monitor public spending and prioritize certain social policies. Thus, it is a great tool for the education and empowerment of local communities.
Steps of the participatory budgeting process
Any city can implement participatory budgeting. It may seem quite complex, but in reality, it’s all about following clear steps. The steps go as follows:
- Lay the groundwork of your participatory budget;
- Inform citizens about the initiative;
- Collect community input;
- Process the input from the community;
- Set up a vote;
- Communicate the results and inform the community about the next steps;
- Implement the budget;
- Repeat from the beginning.
To sum it up, the participatory budgeting process consists of the following phases: plan, act, review, make the necessary changes… and start over!
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