III International Forum of participation practitioners
"Between Values and Procedures – Supporting and Transformation of Participatory Budget"
This year, more than 200 participants attended the Forum, including representatives from 95 Ukrainian communities (cities, villages, amalgamated communities) and 6 countries, except Ukraine: Moldova, Germany, Armenia, Georgia, Poland, UK.

Irpin
October 26-27, 2018
Organizers: Irpin City Council, Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation PAUCI, International technical assistance project "Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance" (PLEDDG) which is being implemented by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and funded by the Global Affairs Canada, The Solidarity Fund PL, The Project "Support of the territorial communities of Ukraine in connection with the increase of the number of internally displaced persons" is one of the initiatives of the infrastructure program for Ukraine and is implemented by the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, The Project Integrated Urban Development in Ukraine implemented by the German federal company Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Open Space Works Cooperative, Foundations for Freedom.
History of the Forum
2015-2018
2015
2015


Participatory Budgeting – Version 1.0 for Ukraine
On November, 25, 2015 the workshop «Participatory Budgeting – Version 1.0 for Ukraine» took place in Kyiv and was attended by the participants from 11 Ukrainian and 2 Polish cities.
2016
2016
Ukrainian forum of Participation Practitioners "When the City is Governed by the Residents".
That is the title of the First Forum of Participation Practitioners of Ukraine which took place in Irpin city. The representatives from 20+ Ukrainian cities had talks, discussions, shared the best practice examples and made new acquaintances during these two days.
2017
2017
Training session for PB tutors
On February, 17-19, a training session for PB tutors took place in Irpin city, where expert-practitioners: PB coordinators, members of the working groups, project originators from 12 cities of Ukraine came to.
2017
2017
International Forum of Participation Practitioners «Participatory Budgeting from А to Z»
Within these two days the participants shared their experience and reviewed the best practices and expertise with the experienced moderators at 15 diverse sessions. The representatives from 100+ communities and guests from Georgia, Moldova and Great Britain discussed how to make the Participatory Budgeting really public and effective in order to change the society and make it bring the changes itself implementing its own ideas.
2018
2018
International Forum of Participation Practitioners
"Between Values and Procedures – Supporting and Transformation of Participatory Budget". Forum was held in an Open Space format. During the two days of the Forum participants offered themes and worked on them. At the end of the session participants formed the Book of Open Space "Lost illusions of the participatory budget: how to support and transform the PB process"
Official Forum Opening
Key speakers
Przemyslaw Gursky
Lodz, Poland
Lucas Born
Berlin, Germany
Chris Evans
UK
Lost illusions - how to support and change the process of the participatory budget

Stop for a moment: think about the lost illusions, what exactly are the illusions we have in mind? What was our aim, which disappointed us in the next version of the PB? We expect some results when implement PB. We think that we will change the world ... otherwise: PB will change things for the better if we participate. It does not. Budget is just a tool of change. The tool itself will not change the world and social reality - just as the distribution of all baseball bits will not give residents and residents victory in a large, professional baseball league. So, is our disappointment right? Have we really lived in illusions, now we are disappointed?

PB really disappoints. The number of people involved in the process is not what we would like, the projects do not reflect the real, actual needs of the community, we lose enthusiasm and social interest through the participation of schools and other, well-organized communities. Does it mean defeat? In my opinion - no. In any part of the world, when we introduce new tools, we do not evaluate the functioning of the tools. We evaluate their effectiveness in the context of our goal. What was our goal? What an aim PB should serve?

Let's go back to the basics, to the original idea of PB. The easiest example of participation is our own homes and families. Every day we decide what we do with our budgets - whether we buy a TV or leave it on vacation. We go to the cinema, or maybe we have a child who needs school textbooks. It works the same way. As an apartment, our city is our home - we must remember this, learn from it. City - our family - let's get acquainted with each other, consider it in terms of different needs and requirements. City, commune, union of municipalities - this is our space. We must remember it; we must learn responsibility for it. It will take a while.

PB, both in Poland and in Ukraine, is introduced in order to learn. And as a learning tool, the budget works - it can be seen in every place where it is. Regardless of what participation in the budget is - how many people will not participate in it, they are always more interested in their space than before its introduction. It does not matter whether the residents are satisfied with the projects or not - at this stage, people no longer shrug their shoulders, they start to be interested in criticizing what they do not like, praise and support what is good for them! Even if budgets disappear in school projects, it does not matter! It contributes to the discussion, the change in budgets, the idea of how many schools previously underfunded! We have to be patient. Our work of participatory practitioners is needed. And its consequences can be seen at every turn, in each city, municipality, at each subsequent general forum. We need to be consistent. Answering a question on how to change PB, answer boldly - change! Adapting to each individual's social reality, in response to further identified problems, subsequent emerging needs, voices of constructive critique or praise. How to support the implementation of PB? Just look at them through the prism of participation, the number of residents. Let's focus on them - they represent our success.

One more thing at the end: I have been coming to Ukraine for four years. More and more I have the feeling, when I come here, I look in the mirror - a mirror from the clothing store, where it always looks good. When I come back, it's not so good in my own mirror. It really works - social participation, further discussions, panels, open spaces - in Ukraine I study every day. In Poland, it's getting harder to learn - we are focused on solving the immediate problems, we're dying in procedures, complicate them, and this idea is quite simple. I do not believe in lost illusions. Only in inappropriate, poorly set expectations. I have no doubt that these four years are years of good work.
- Przemek Gorski
Handout: Quality criteria for good public participation in Berlin-Mitte

Early information
The public will be informed as early as possible about planned projects and related decision-making processes within the district.

Open-ended Processes
The participation procedures are open-ended processes. Participation starts at a time when there is still significant leeway for decision-making over the subject. Participation takes time.

Clear communication
The objectives, the leeway for decision-making and the time frame are clearly shown at the beginning of the
participation process. Also, the legal and content-wise limits of the participation process are clearly stated. The process is communicated comprehensibly and transparently to the public.

Target group-oriented approach
All groups of population should have the opportunity to actively participate in participatory processes. Obstacles for the participation are reduced by target-group oriented approaches and suitable participation formats.

Recognition of the diversity of interests
Good citizen participation recognizes the diversity of interests of different groups within the district. The diverse experiences, the knowledge and the perspectives of the citizenship, administration and politics are
collected and appreciated within the participation process. Controversial topics are discussed in a solution-oriented manner.

Dialogue
Good citizen participation requires a willingness to engage from all sides. Rules established at the beginning of the process are respected by all involved. Fairness and respect are important values in all discussion processes. All participants contribute constructively to the process. Citizen participation makes sense only if all parties agree that they want to contribute to the improvement of the respective project. If consensus cannot be reached in controversial discussions, the goal is to find a compromise. It requires a structured
process to come to a common conclusion.

Liability
Good public participation relies on liability. The results obtained are implemented in a binding and reliable manner. If not obstacles against implementation will be explained.

Documentation
The results of the process will be promptly documented and made available to the public. At the same time, it will be transparently explained how decisions have been made and what further steps are planned. Shared achievements are particularly communicated to strengthen the culture of participation in the district.

Sufficient resources
Good public participation requires human, financial and temporal resources - these have to be taken into account in the budget. The participants in a procedure bear the responsibility for dealing carefully with the resources in the procedure and in the proposed solutions.
Lucas Born
It is a huge pleasure to be in Kiev again. I want to thank you for the opportunity to come here to meet with you all, and for inviting an Englishman to speak in this most crucial part of Europe.

In many parts of the world they say, "You can tell and Englishman anywhere, but you cannot tell him much". In other words, he thinks he knows best. I will try to avoid that trap this morning.

It is not really my role to talk about the detail of Participatory Budgeting. There are people in Britain who promote it, and they have some success. I wish they had more. But whoever controls the budget controls the organisation, and not many people like to lose control, even if the results they could achieve are really impressive.

I am a farmer by profession, and I take a farmer's approach. If I want the seeds that I plant to grow well, I have to prepare the soil to receive them. When it comes to Participatory Budgeting, if we want people to be willing to share control we have to prepare the ground by building trust. Nobody will share control with someone they do not trust.

I come from a country with many divisions. Believe it or not, the referendum in 2016 about whether we should leave the European Union was itself supposed to resolve a very divisive question and to build trust. In fact it divided us more radically than ever, as I have seen when I have been involved in some very modest efforts to start to rebuild that trust.

So it is quite possible that ideas that are supposed to bring us together can end up driving us even further apart, unless someone prepares the ground well. And when they do, the results can be spectacular.

To give an example, in South Wales, not far from where I live is a big steelworks known as the Llanwern steelworks. When Margaret Thatcher became our Prime Minister, the steel industry had been nationalised, and it was losing huge amounts of money. She decided to force it to become efficient by closing all loss-making plants. One by one she closed big steelworks all over the country, throwing thousands of people out of work. These were big, well-known factories. She closed twelve, and the next on the list was the Llanwern Steelworks.

There are many people who have still not forgiven her for these actions. For them she was confirming in the most painful way their view that people like her were not interested in working people, but only in making money for themselves. They opposed her by every possible means.

The trade union leaders at Llanwern, while they could never agree politically with Mrs Thatcher, made a different choice – faced with the loss of their livelihoods, they would focus on trying to keep their steelworks open, and they would do it by building trust. They held meetings with some of their customers to find out why they were no longer buying steel from Llanwern. They agreed radical plans with their own management to restructure how the steelworks worked, and they took these plans to the Minister for Industry of a Conservative government. "Will you keep our steelworks open if we work with our management to implement these plans?" they asked him.

This was like negotiating with your enemy. So deep were the social divisions in that region that one of them told me, "Normally, we would not go into the same room as someone from the Conservative Party, let alone talk to them". Many did not understand what they were doing. But when you are trying to build trust you talk to unexpected people.

The Minister was surprised and impressed enough to agree to what was called a 'stay of execution' for the Llanwern Steelworks. The restructuring plan was carried out, and for a while Llanwern unexpectedly became the most efficient steelworks in Europe. It is still working today, and the town that depends on it is still prospering. In fact after this no more steelworks were closed by that government. Starting at Llanwern, they had found a different solution – unlike the coal mining industry which chose the road of confrontation and now hardly exists in Britain.

Building trust really does make a difference.

In 1950, the year I was born, all of Europe was trying to recover from WWII. France and Germany had fought each other three times in one lifetime. Their history and their relations were defined by hatred and mistrust.

Against this background, Robert Schuman, Foreign Minister of France sent Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor of Germany, the draft of a secret plan to merge the heavy industries of both countries and make them mutually dependent so that they could never go to war again. Adenauer agreed to it in about two hours and suggested no changes. It was of course the first big step towards what we now call the European Union. There must have been an extraordinary level of trust between those two men.

Another example comes to mind. At a place called Caux in Switzerland there is an amazing conference centre. If you ever get the chance, do go there. I was privileged to work there with one of the most trusted and successful leaders of the construction industry in Switzerland. Why was he trusted? It was not because of anything he said. It was something he did. He went to the tax authorities and paid them a very large sum of money in taxes that he owed but had successfully hidden from them. After that, why would they not trust him? And he used to say it saved him a fortune in accountant's fees, because he only needed one set of accounts for his business.

But how do we build trust, at whatever level we are working?

Simply trusting people who are not trustworthy is no solution.

I want to suggest three requirements for building it. There may well be others, and we might want to discuss them during these days:-

1. Be consistent. When I was managing people working on the farm at home, I discovered I could not expect them to trust me if I made demands on them that I ignored myself. For example, if I did not communicate to them about the decisions I was making which affected them, I could not expect them to pass on to me important information about their work. If I was unpredictable, our cooperation suffered. They couldn't trust me.

2. Be transparent. An honest conflict of interest can usually be resolved by compromise, but a hidden agenda always creates mistrust. This even works in family life! My relationship with my father was transformed after I told him about the double life I was starting to lead – one kind of person in public, and a different person when no-one was looking. It was a horribly difficult thing to talk about, but it was worth it.

3. Address our own faults first. There is a song which says, "When I point my finger at my neighbour, there are three more pointing back at me". (Don't worry, I won't try to sing it here.) What it means is that every time I try to point to the faults and failures of someone else, what everyone else sees are my own faults. If I want to start a process of change or of trust-building, the best place to start is with change in myself.

So, be consistent, be transparent, address our own faults first. These are the ideas that I wanted to put before you, for thought, for discussion, and in the hope that they make a real contribution to the cause of participatory budgeting.

I look forward to meeting many of you in the hours ahead.

Chris Evans
Open Space
Оpen space – is a one-size-fits-all, simple, and efficient method for conducting meetings and conferences. Оpen space offer opportunities to discuss relevant topics and participate in decision-making process for all. Time and space are structured in such a way that participants provide work, discussion, education or planning by their own. All the participants work on tasks for which they are prepared to take responsibility and are relevant for them.
Participants were invited to take part in the open space methodology, which was moderated by Oleksandra Tselishcheva.
Thanks to this format, the participants were able to:
  • talk with like-minded people on interesting topics;
  • find a solution to their questions;
  • to establish contacts between themselves;
  • find new solutions in implementing PB;
  • share knowledge and achievements, learn about negative experiences.
Agenda
At the Forum 35 topics was addressed and set out by the participants.
List of the topics:
PB through the prism of research «Municipal Democracy Index 2018».
From competition to cooperation. How to build trust between authors?
Deterioration of the rivers. The case of Irpin.
Educational projects always win. What to do with it?
How to plant the seed and protect it from pests?
Conflict of interests.
How to engage people in PB processes?
Transferring of the authorship in PB process.
How to estimate and carry out the project appropriately.
Could the same projects win for years?
Where the line between coercion and agitation?
Moderator function and responsibility.
Effective ways to make citizens aware.
How to organize the voting in an effective way?
Addressing corruption during project implementation.
Why some projects aren't implemented.
Identifying breaking the rules and cancellation the votes of the project.
PB standards.
Nationwide PB.
Consensus or voting.
Engagement tools and popularization of PB.
Paper ballot voting. To be or not to be?
How to increase citizens trust to PB?
Urban Revitalization.
IDP voting.
Social networks in PB.
Administrative intervention in PB processes.
Youth participation in PB.
How to engage the author on implementation stage?
On-line platform as transparent tool.
"Leader" approach (rural development).
Analytical report "PB in Ukraine: experience of the first years".
NGO role in PB.
Can a moderator be an author in the same time?
Interaction between local authorities and NGO.
Impressions
"How to sow the grain, so it wouldn't be eaten by pests?" Find out with Katherine Borovik, coordinator of the Kamyanets Youth Initiatives Center at the 3rd International Participation Practitioners Forum. It was concluded that it is necessary to build "islands of trust", including more and more people into their structure. And for this purpose, we need to be consistent, transparent and ready for a compromise. So, they began to work together during the forum, exploring additional opportunities for personal development of youth, which provides the youth public budget, identified future work directions during the launch of the second stage of the PB, and also considered longer-term prospects of cooperation. MAIN GOAL: Enhancing the youth and increasing its participation in the PB processes of the city of Kamensk, Dnipropetrovsk region. PB INSPIRES AND UNITES!!!


Lyudmyla Goncharenko
Kamyanske
An interesting method of communication and finding the truth "OpenSpace" today works on issues of the PB. The delegates of the 3rd International Forum of Practitioners of Participation and representatives of the partner municipalities of the project # PROMIS share experience. From Ivano-Frankivsk region - Ivano-Frankivsk, Kolomyia and Yaremche cities. Someone can already show positive results, someone is only on the way to success!


I tried to get on all. An interesting observation - the experience of Kyiv was demanded by everyone and was perceived with an undisguised delight of where we managed to advance in the development of our model of PB. It turned out that most of the cities while improving their own regulations on PB - read the Kiev Regulation, because there are answers to almost all the issues that have risen on the discussion platforms of the Forum. It inspired me even more :) that we jointly do a cool thing (and not only for Kiev). And that it would be good for us to fully realize our own situation :)


Olha Bernasovska
Kyiv
Thanks to the experience of all those present, we found a way out of the tumultuous situation in Zhytomyr. We came up with our problems beyond the boundaries of the city to the international level. Thank you to all my friends, whom I met in 2016, I am glad to see you all and all the new ones that I have met on this forum. You are all cool! The only pity that I did not have time to get acquainted with all nearly 200 participants, I think that everything is ahead. Your experience and our development further. Many thanks to the organizers of the forum.


Natalia Ozhehova
Zhytomyr
Representatives of local authorities, non-governmental organizations, experts from Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, all share experience and new practices. The event takes place in the Open Space format, ie all participants are the ones who form the forum process. Moldova, Georgia in certain issues of implementation of these practices ahead of Ukraine: urban revitalization, development of rural areas. Very interesting projects from our like-minded people. To be continued...
Valeria Gontar
Borove
Everybody dreams about hyperloop, speed transcontinental connections and smart cities. But actually people are connected by common values, ideas, thoughts, goals and actions. That's it! Our joint result of The 3 rd International Forum of participation practitioners "Between Values and Procedures – Supporting and Transformation of Participatory Budget" and Georgian delegations is the development of participation's bridges between our countries: exchange of experience, budget development, mechanisms of direct democracy and self-government. The first intentions have already been written out and signed together.


Oleksiy Kovalenko
Kyiv
1. A lot of time and energy was devoted to voting issues. The restrictions and advantages of electronic and traditional voting are considered. However, it should be kept in mind that the more technical and organizationally improved the system will be offered, the more it will be time and space for use. Efforts should be made to ensure that technical problems do not obscure other stages of the implementation of the GB, in particular the purpose of activating the inhabitants.

2. Despite the fact that there were many cities that implemented PB several times, discussion of the stage of implementation of the selected projects took place. Meanwhile, the success and effectiveness of these projects is the best advancement of the idea of PB, and each completed project prompts citizens to participate in the next year both as an author and as a voter.

3. Idea of separating thematic projects within the PB, for example, regarding to projects submitted by schools and other municipal bodies or youth projects played a more prominent role compared with the previous years.

4. Deliberating the methods for selecting projects, the possibility of decision making during the meeting of citizens or even by consensus was proposed several times. Such proposals were not formulated in the long run, but attention was paid to the possibility of combining thematic and territorially close projects. It indicates a more mature perception of PB by those who implemented it.

Krzystoff Filtsek
Director, PAUCI Foundation
Forum Organizing Committee
Kostyantyn Ploskiy
Director Deputy, Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation PAUCI, Kyiv
Leonid Donos
Project Coordinator, Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation Foundation PAUCI, Poltava
Oleksandra Tselisheva
Open Space Cooperative
Pavlo Kozeletskyi
facilitator, member of "Foundations for Freedom"
Iryna Stasyuk
PB expert, Rivne

Mihkail Aslikyan
PB expert, Marneuli Municipality, Georgia
Yevgen Perevezentsev
PB expert, Member of PB implementation Working Group, Kremenchuk
Nataliya Vynnychenko
Co-Chairwoman of PB Coordination Council (community quota), Sumy
Lyudmyla Protsenko
PB expert, Member of PB Implementation Coordination Council, Cherkassy
Roman Shyrokyh
Member of PB Working Group in Poltava, Secretary of PB Working Group in Poltava region

Tetyana Lagovska
director, Irpin Community Foundation; head of Public Council, Irpin city council
Anna Nikolenko-Baeva
PB expert, Chernyhiv
Kateryna Akula
PB expert, Head of PB Working Group in Zaporizhzhya
Roman Nikitenko
project manager, PAUCI
Галина Азарова
PB expert, Zaporizhzhya

Yana Vichirko
Journalist, Member of PB Coordination Council, Kropyvnytskiy
Dmytro Fedorij
photographer
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