The Council of Europe is about to finalise the mini-project “Strengthening Participatory Democracy in Tbilisi City Hall in Georgia”, which results from the pilot project “Supporting Citizen Participation in Tbilisi” that was launched in September 2019 to help the largest municipality – Tbilisi Municipality - of Georgia to ensure that civil participation has a real impact on the decision-making processes and to strengthen the dialogue and co-operation between the public authorities and civil society in the decision-making process.

The recent on-line International Conference on Civil Participation in Decision-Making on 6 and 7 May 2020 convened by Georgian Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and the Division of Elections and Civil Society was yet another inspiration https://www.coe.int/en/web/civil-society/-/international-conference-on-civil-participation-in-decision-making

Surfing on the vague of the conference’s success, the project proposal is being, in close co-operation with the Tbilisi City Municipality’s high level officials as well as experts in order to ensure that the lessons learnt and shortcomings revealed during the previous project implementation are taking into consideration. The project also reflects the new needs and requirements to take a step forward and ensure sustainability of the cooperation between the local self-government and civil society actors. The present project aims to further develop already existing piloted dialogue through establishing CivicLab Workshop to strengthen and enhance mutual trust and respect between the public authorities and civil society.