How does an international community of participation experts improve the PB around the world?
This year Participatory Budgeting (PB) was implemented in more than 11,000 communities around the world anywhere from China and Russia to Canada and Australia. Yet this exercise in participatory democracy is still under-researched and the richness of the experiences and know-how of the practitioners and experts from different context is still scattered.
So, in order to facilitate knowledge sharing, research, learning, and resource development for PB practitioners and advocates around the globe, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) established the Global Participatory Budgeting (PB) Hub. The Hub has created a Global PB Support Board, and a Co-founder of Participation Factory Katya Petrikevich is a member of this board.
The first Support Board meeting took place in Edinburgh, United Kingdom, from October 22 to 24, 2019 and marked the start of intensive cooperation of PB implementers and experts from around the globe. “It is an incredible group of people with vast and diverse experience. But we had to start from the basics,” comments Katya, “and first understand and map the needs of those who are engaged in the PB process.”
“Diversity of our group is a virtue,” she adds, “Yet one of the biggest tricks was to understand the sharp differences in the contexts in which PBs are being implemented and to start designing solutions that would be equally useful for practitioners anywhere in the world.”
Since it is Global PB Hub, the process for defining resources that are to be developed follows the steps of a standard PB process: draft your ideas, further develop them, prioritize them, evaluate their feasibility, and vote on the final list. The draft ideas presented by members of the Board include everything from creating a database of available resources and research materials on PB to development of resources on methodologies to make PBs more inclusive for women, PoC, people with disabilities, and other marginalised groups.
Do you want to learn more about our PB work and our engagement with the Global PB Hub? Do not hesitate to contact us and follow our blog and social media to receive notification on our news posts about the Global PB Hub work and the PB Scotland Conference.
Your Participation Factory team.