CEBSD NEWS

Dialogue with Civil Society

1. People and politics
The project People and politics were introduced at the dialogue workshop in Oslo November 2006. The Scandinavian partners in CEBSD recognised this project as a concrete opportunity to carry out the work on the task force "Dialogue with Civil society". As well as the three Scandinavian members of CEBSD, The Civil College Foundation/HACD, DC and CDF wanted to join as partners. The project was planned in a preparatory seminar in February 2007 and the application was send to each of the National agencies that administrates the Grundtvig Life Long Learning programme "Learning partnerships". Other partners were invited to participate from Lithuania, Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria. Unfortunately only the Romanian partner succeeded with their application. The application from CDF did not either get through.

We ended up as a partnership consisting of The District Sagene in Oslo/Norway (coordinating partner), Cesam/Sweden, The Settlement/Denmark, The Civil College Foundation/Hungary, DC/Spain, The Romanian Association for Community Development in addition to the Ideas Bank. We had our first partnership meeting in Barcelona from the 7th to the 9th of November.

The main issues of the project are as follows:

"The learning partnership 'People and Politics' will provide learning exchanges between citizens, local politicians, citizen organizations and trainers, as well as local administrators.
The focus is to exchange and improve methods for citizen participation, which led to changes in community issues.

The project will demonstrate how participatory methods contribute to the revitalization of local democracy and a sustainable development of neighbourhoods. This will help people to explore different cultures and to practice intercultural dialogue through different methods.
Each host country will create an activity in which representatives from neighbourhood organisations gather with decision makers. Such gatherings include f. ex. a Social Forum, a citizen's festival and conference or a "democratic dialogue workshop", a particular method for participation.

The activities will also include adult education organisations, politicians, researchers and the facilitators for community development. All involved persons will be learners and at the same time experts contributing with their own experiences.

A website will be created for the involved partners, communities and organizations; it will contain descriptions of partners and methods, including their different context and background. In addition, each partner will disseminate information and results from 'People and Politics' in his/her home country and networks." (For more details you may ask for the full application as well as the action plan and division of tasks that was made in the Barcelona meeting).

We think that the methods and case studies from this project will be relevant in the TLCD project.

2. Strengthening participative democracy through collaborative learning
Since another Nordic partner had to retire from this project the Ideas Bank was invited to join as a new partner, (we were recommended through our participation in the Nordic think tank DEMOS). The project relates in many ways to the task force and as well it gives opportunities to develop our network and possibility of getting multipliers in the TLCD project.
Project rationale and aim:

The Grundtvig project - Strengthening Participative Democracy - is oriented towards the situation of threat against cohesion in societies caused by globalisation, modernity and individualisation. In the light of this development, tendencies of economical and cultural polarisation are envisaged in European societies. Among people, there seem to be a move in focus from joint cooperation, solidarity and common values towards a more individualistic search for personal interests and advantages.

This project contributes to a redefinition and a reinforcement of local and regional participative democracy which implies the aspects of being a citizen - not only in the local, regional and national democracies - but also in the European society.

The project aims at opposing these tendencies by the development and dissemination of a training course for practitioners engaged in activities of Participative Democracy.

The purpose of the training course is competence development for practitioners and volunteers who want to set up democracy activities. The training course comprises topics like:
  • Taking part in democratic processes
  • Facilitating activities and fundraising in relation to participative democracy
  • Discussion on how to develop a European identity
  • Organising creative processes to engage people in participative democracy.
In order to ensure implementation and dissemination of the training course, a model for citizens' involvement (CIM) is developed as to form the support structure for setting up participative democracy activities.

In short - the model is aimed at securing the structures and resources for setting up activities, the training course aims at developing the competences of practitioners.

In the first phase of the project period three desk studies have been carried out in Denmark, Spain and Austria. Based on these studies there have been arranged so called Dialogue meetings in each of the partner countries with the aim to discuss the studies and as well contribute to the content of the Model of Citizens Involvement Model. The Ideas Bank arranged their dialogue meeting the 21st of November. I will write a report from this meeting that will be available at the website of the project together with the reports from the other dialogue meetings. As well a list of the stakeholders participating in the dialogue meeting will be available.

The perspectives of the three studies have been:
  1. To examine the current situation for practising participative democracy, taken into consideration historic background and major changes in society, traditions for citizens' participation and potentials - as well as barriers - for improving local democracy.
  2. Selected people's opinion on local democracy, - a sort of state of the art. The persons have been interviewed on the questions:
    a. How do the citizens get more influence in the decision-making?
    b. How to improve active citizenship?
    If you want more information you may look at www.learnship.eu where all three double studies are presented in full lengths.
  3. Liveable communities
    During the coming 5 years we will be assisting the programme Liveable Communities with the following objectives which are very close to the Ideas Bank core activity:
    1. Pedagogical presentations of the concept of sustainable community development in the broad perspective involving both an ecological, economical and social dimension,
    2. Methods for democratic dialogues and participation
    3. Collecting and disseminating of good examples of projects that can earn high interest in the shape of a better and more sustainable future.
    The programme is supported by the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and is led by The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities.) Among 100 municipalities are at the moment taking part in the programme and will work together in thematically networks. Our main role will partly be training of trainers and partly we will do training in some of the thematically networks.

    The pedagogical material that we will be made through the project period might be of interest for the work on the task force Dialogue with Civil Society as well as the Training and Learning for Community Development project on networking, funded by the European Commission (see section on TLCD on this website) . If so we will look for the possibilities of translating parts of the material. Oslo December 2007, kirsten@idebanken.no

  4. The follow up of the Nordic Campaign "The Balancing Act"
    As mentioned in earlier board meetings a part of our training and learning activities around democratic participation in a sustainable community development takes place in the field of life long learning. We focus on strengthening the capacity and competence in taking action towards sustainability. We work actively in different levels with the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development. Together with partners in Sweden and Denmark we initiated the Nordic Campaign "The Balancing Act" (www.balanseakten.no ) March 2006. Nordic institutions of education - both formal and non-formal - are invited to join and work practically with the challenges stated by the UN Summit Meeting in Johannesburg 2002: Education is a key to sustainable development and essential to improve people's ability to solve environmental and development problems, education for sustainable development is an issue for all people in all phases of their life. In the first phase of the project we directed the invitation towards the folk highs schools and associations for adult learning. We have carried out workshops for teachers and students in a network of Norwegian folk high schools that joined the Balancing Act.

Lately we arranged a workshop in co-operation with the Nordic Network for adult learning, the participants were specially invited stakeholders in the field of life long learning from the Nordic countries. The main theme of the workshop was: "Mobilisation for sustainable development - how can the adult learning and the folk high schools play a leading role." The Balancing Act was seen as an excellent opportunity to strengthen this role of leadership. Oslo December 2007, kirsten@idebanken.no

European Dialogue
This report from Maté Varga looks at the first steps in a programme of work led by The Hungarian Association for Community Development and working on joint action between CEBSD and the Central and Eastern Citizen's Network.

Practical ideas for future cooperation:
    After the two network's introduction some practical ideas highlighted the possible ways of future cooperation:
  • Training: both networks have regular activities/initiations/projects related to training, that area seems to be a possible link between the organisations. The cooperation can be developed in different ways, as a first step the CEECN would invite Kirsten to help to implement training in the close future.
  • Conference: that point is promising, as both network organises conferences/seminars/international meetings on a 1-3 years basis and the connection between the events could make sense in different ways (see more at the Joint Meeting session)
  • Best practices: exchange of best practices is important and we should build on existing work on good practice e.g. CEECN database, CEBSD Best Practice project
  • Action: besides trainings and regular meetings there can be several points for organizing common activities. The CEECN had an idea on a bus tour around the CEE region, which includes a number of symbolic elements. The CEBSD is interested to take a part and run a bus through the WE region and add one more symbolic element by the CE and West meeting in the Strassburg.

European Dialogue Joint Meeting of CEBSD and CEECN on 9th and 10th May 2008
We all are interested to create a wider, Pan-European forum (European Citizens' Forum or European Future Forum) with a general aim of making space, creating the infrastructure, providing a common arena for dialogue and participation. The European Future Forum as a longer-term goal could help illuminate what our next steps should be in the May Forum.

Purpose of European Dialogue - the three boxes
Sharing and getting to know each other is an important element of the meeting, good practices could help with the sharing. Get to know is both the networks and each organisation in the two networks
Next, a wider perspective for the future - therefore this conference is a strategy conference
Another box of content is dissemination, publication and relationship to media.
Networking goes across the "boxes".



There is plenty in the boxes to share with you. Contact matev@kkapcsolat.hu , anna@ceecn.net or co-ordinator@cebsd.org to find out more.