The goal was to ensure that the participatory budgeting process in the area of Lundby was more inclusive, especially of the voices of young people. We wanted to achieve higher levels of equal participation and to incorporate diversity as a criterion for inclusion. The participatory budget is part of Gothenburg City’s strategic plan ‘Equal City’ – which places particular focus on the following areas:
– Creating the conditions for inclusion, influence and trust
– Creating a good start in life for young people and good conditions for growing up
The National University of Rosario (UNR) is a community of more than 100,000 people made up of twelve Faculties and three Middle Schools located in the city of Rosario (Argentina).
Since 2020, the Participatory Budget (PBUNR) has been managed, structured from two independent participation processes: 1. PB Faculties, which involves people from the four cloisters, the twelve Faculties and other dependencies of the University; and 2. PB Schools: where each one of the schools works as an independent universe. In the latter, there are more than 5,000 young people between 13 and 18 years old qualified to participate.
The entire YOUth Making It Happen process was youth led through a Youth Co-Design Panel, with the support of Derry City and Strabane District Local Authority as part of a Carnegie UK Trust Embedding Wellbeing in Northern Ireland programme.
The YOUth Making It Happen! Participatory Budgeting process involved young people aged 12-25 years having a direct say on how public resources are spent in their local areas to make things better and to make things happen! This gave younger people real power in decision-making.
Derry City & Strabane District Council opened a special PB fund of £20,000 for community projects and asked local young people for creative new ways to build a better future and to help transform local communities for the better. £2,500 was made available in each of the 8 Local Growth Areas to deliver the ideas generated by young people. Individual projects could apply for awards of up to £1,000. The Youth Co-Design Panel agreed 6 Themes which ideas could fall under: Arts and Culture, Community & Environment, Education & Skills, Equality and Inclusion, Safety, and Sport- Health & Wellbeing.
In 2017, the first edition of Participatory Budgets (PB) in Xàtiva was organized with significant individual and collective citizen participation. As a result of the evaluation of the process carried out in 2017, it was proposed that part of the 2018 PBs be allocated to a specific participation process for the youth in order to increase the impact of the project on the population as a whole and to improve the culture of citizen participation in the municipality.
The youth between 6 and 16 were able to decide how to spend a maximum of €10000: €5000 euros for students in primary education and €5000 for students in secondary education. This part of the budget was destined either to investments or to the design of projects to promote citizen participation in the municipality.
The Rubí town council, representing around 77000 inhabitants, allocated two separate items to the town’s participatory budgets (PBs). Firstly, €250000 were allocated for town improvements based on proposals made by people aged over 16 years and resident in Rubí. Secondly, €50000 were allocated to proposals made by children aged between 8 and 16 years for improvements in their schools.
These proposals were formulated through a process of collective co-creation, in which Rubí’s Advisory Council of Children and Adolescents had a leading role, together with events that took place in public contexts and in classrooms.
In Rubí, the children’s PBs are conceived of as a project that runs parallel to the process for adults. It follows initiatives proposed a year earlier.
The general objectives of the PB are:
To design projects with and for children within the town’s PB program
To involve children in urban life by incorporating their voice into a city project
To empower children, making them aware of their role in the community and of the value of their contributions
To guarantee that this process is representative, highlighting the role of the children’s representatives and using language that they can easily understand
To agree on conclusions which consolidate the participants’ learning and can be disseminated to other collectives
To include different town management agents in the initiative in order to implement transversality and achieve broader goals
To strengthen existing local participation structures, including the Council of Children and Adolescents
To disseminate the project to all citizens, during the process itself and after its completion
To coordinate face-to-face participation with technological tools, such as the participa.rubi.cat virtual platform.
The project aims to encourage the local youth to become more involved in “decision-making on issues that directly affect them”. The purpose is to promote youth participation with actions within the wider municipal program to promote citizen participation, the so-called “Peligros Sounds”. The project’s goal is that young people should acquire values such as active citizenship, cooperation and solidarity. At the same time, the youth would be able to create networks of participation and learn how this participation could improve local democratic life—in contact with politicians and technical staff.
Children and young people at 11 educational centers in Cartagena—all the public centers in the town—have decided how to invest €110000 that the Cartagena City Council allocated to Participatory Budgets (PBs) in schools and institutes in 2019. Six thousand students from seven primary schools and four secondary schools voted to decide what to do with the budget item assigned for that purpose by the City Council. The students were asked to choose which were the best proposals for improvements to their facilities, from projects they themselves had prepared.
The facilities selected for improvement were air conditioning systems, sports and computer equipment, sound equipment, and musical instruments. To vote, an electoral roll was drawn up at each center and the corresponding polling stations were set up, staffed by the students themselves.
The previous year, the CEIP (Public School for Nursery and Primary Education) Virgen del Carmen and the IES (Institute for Secondary Education) San Isidoro de Los Dolores, participated in a pilot PB project for primary and secondary schools that, in 2019, was extended to all public centers.
In Altea—a town of approximately 22 000 inhabitants in the province of Alicante (Spain)—participatory budgets (PBs) are drawn up as a result of two participatory processes:
Ideas to be included in the town budget are presented. All citizens, including boys and girls, can put forward ideas they consider beneficial for the town
These proposals are put to a vote. In this phase, 10 proposals are made public for voting.