Engaged citizens for quality local public services

About this project

<p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="color: #000000">In recent years, the involvement of citizens in society has increased, but the level of influence of decisions at the local level, especially by young people, is still low. Thus, local public services provided to citizens are still deficient, as studies show, especially the figures in the European Commission's country reports, with negative effects on the quality of life in urban areas. The project aims to directly contribute to improving the quality of urban life by involving citizens, especially young people, by encouraging urban authorities to provide quality public services.</span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="color: #000000">More precisely, education, local public transportation, respectively waste management are targeted by monitoring activities of relevant indicators in 47 municipalities (40 county residences, Bucharest + 6 sectors), by selecting and training 80 citizens, followed of advocacy campaigns for each of the 3 public services from 8 municipalities selected for the intervention of the local involvement groups set up. The steps will primarily aim at complying with the rules in force for the three public services, namely the Education Law, local public transport services, the waste regulatory package, but also the secondary regulatory framework.</span></span></span></p> <p style="text-align: justify"><span style="font-size: 11pt"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="color: #000000">Tools will also be developed to monitor the quality of public services and citizen involvement through security activities and local advocacy campaigns, as well as a transfer of good community mobilization practices with the help of partner Vellenes Fellesorganisasjon. At the same time, a series of civic and environmental awareness sessions are planned with the support of Act For Tomorrow, a partner organization also involved in monitoring and conducting advocacy campaigns on waste management, thanks to the expertise of this association in the field.</span></span></span></p>

Bilateral cooperation results

The project partner is Vellenes Fellesorganisasjon. The cooperation started with the preparation of the National Diagnostic Report on the quality of municipal public services and continued with the preparation and implementation of the study visit. During the working visit of the SAR and AfT team to Oslo, the partner's' representatives were involved both in the training sessions for the members of the local involvement groups and in the preparation and launch of the monitoring report in the 8 intervention municipalities.

Project partners

• Vellenes Fellesorganisasjon (VFO) Donor project partner· Norway
• Act for Tomorrow Project partner· Romania