Three municipalities of Georgia, Tbilisi, Marneuli and Gori, started to pilot Council of Europe civil participation methodology – Civil Participation in Decision-Making Toolkit - in local communities for the development of municipal strategic documents. Applying this methodology will help the municipalities to enhance inclusive policy development.
In order to provide municipalities with the relevant knowledge in the methodology and necessary skills to use the civil participation in decision-making toolkit in practice, the representatives of city halls and city councils in Tbilisi, Marneuli and Gori, undertook an intensive 3-day training on 15-17 March.
In the course of the training, the representatives of municipalities assessed the community in the prism of civil participation, created mapping of all existing participatory mechanisms in municipalities and learned methodological and structured means of stakeholder identification and assessment through using the civil participation toolkit.
The methodology will help municipalities to ensure participatory decision-making for devising key strategic municipal documents such as the economic development strategy and action plan, tourism strategy. With using the civil participation in decision-making toolkit, the municipalities will identify participation strategies tailored to each group of stakeholders ensuring quality and efficient participation processes.
Following the 3-day workshop, each municipality will carry out community assessment, stakeholder mapping and assessment conducted by the civil participation working group formed within the municipality. Council of Europe will continue to support the process of the implementation of the civil participation in decision-making toolkit in pilot municipalities.
This event took place in the framework of the project “Strengthening Participatory Democracy and Human Rights at Local Level in Georgia”, implemented by the Directorate General of Democracy and Human Dignity, Division of Elections and Participatory Democracy and Congress of Local and Regional Authorities within the Council of Europe Action Plan for Georgia 2020-2023 with the financial contribution of the Austrian Development Cooperation.
