The “Strengthening local democracy and citizen participation in the Central Plateau region” program run by Laboratoire-Citoyennetés with funding from Solidar Suisse has already been running for almost a year and a half. The program is working to create local associations capable of political questioning and dialogue, and capable of defending local governance issues. To this end, the program has developed an extensive program of support for local organizations and the media. This work is combined with support for local authorities, to ensure that they are part of a dynamic of consultation and accountability, helping to create the political conditions for improving the provision of local public services and local economic production.
In the 15 months since the program was launched, milestones and governance dynamics have gradually been established. To enable the project’s various stakeholders to form an opinion on the progress made together, Laboratoire Citoyennetés is launching a participative monitoring and capitalization process mid-way through the project.
With this in mind, a consultation workshop was held on March 28, 2018 in Ouagadougou at the Centre National Cardinal Paul ZOUNGRANA to enable the various participants, numbering thirty-six (36)which are networks of civil society organizations, managers of local radios and communes of intervention, local elected officials to familiarize themselves with the approach as well as the tools provided for this purpose.
The general aim of this workshop is to enable networks of civil society organizations and local radio partners, as well as representatives of the communes involved, to familiarize themselves with the citizen monitoring approach and the program’s mid-term capitalization process.
The main points addressed during the workshop were as follows:
– Presentation of the mid-term capitalization approach, which focused on clarifying the concept of capitalization, its benefits, objectives, etc.
– The presentation of the participatory monitoring approach, which covered the concepts of monitoring, process monitoring and impact monitoring, before outlining the basic principles, the methodological approach to monitoring and the main players and their roles
– The presentation of the outlook, with the announcement of the next steps in the implementation of the participatory monitoring system, as part of the program “Strengthening local democracy and citizen participation in the Central Plateau region”.
The workshop ended with a practical exercise to identify current initiatives and areas of interest, and overall, it can be said that the objectives of the consultation workshop were achieved, in that all participants understood their place and roles in the participatory monitoring and mid-term capitalization mechanism.
In addition, the workshop enabled them to:
– Familiarize themselves with the issues and concepts involved in monitoring, evaluation and capitalization
– Identify the framework note for the program’s mid-term capitalization process
– Familiarize themselves with the citizen monitoring approach used by networks of civil society organizations and local radio partners
– Identify areas of interest or initiatives underway in participatory monitoring and capitalization in relation to the program’s six (6) global indicators.
