On May 19-22, The People Powered 2024 Member Convening took place in Warsaw and we are excited that we could be a part of this super interesting and action-packed event that brought together 77 participation practitioners from 47 organisations in 28 countries and 5 continents!
It has been three days full of discussions about the need for a comprehensive and systematic approach to participation, wrapped together with networking with peers and visiting local engagement and participation hotspots.
Here are some things we learned and discussed along the way:
- The experts continue to highlight that there is no single solution that fits all. Creating responsive, inclusive, and context-specific methodologies is the way to go. So, we need to be creative in our process designs and be able to both experiment with new things yet know when to say no to things that don’t fit the context.
- The one off participatory projects that depend on a political will of a current government cannot be sustainable. So we need to push governmental institutions towards creating long-term commitments, policies, and infrastructure that would guarantee sustainability of participation agenda.
- Capacities of institutional actors are still lagging behind not for the lack of participation enthusiasm (even though at times that is also a challenge) but mostly due to lack of exposure to expert knowledge hubs, insufficient internal capacities to acquire and spread the know-how. We need to continue to bring to public sector representatives the state-of-the-art and practice-oriented capacity-building resources and offer practical learning opportunities.
- Participatory processes need to move past engaging the usual suspects and already engaged and represented populations. Ensuring that a diverse audience is a part of a discussion means better quality of data and subsequent higher quality of outcomes.
- Child and youth engagement is on the rise and doing isolated youth specific projects is not going to suffice. It is necessary to learn how to include children and young people in broader participatory processes and provide them with space to take a (co)leading role in them.
- Not that we ever had doubts, but our sustainable energy projects delivered in the Czech Republic are at the forefront of innovation. Other members from the EU and elsewhere are excited to see this new emerging intersection between a topic of sustainability and participatory approaches. Is it going to be a new best practice? Might very much be.
- The EU is introducing new mandatory environment and community impact assessment standards for the private sector (enterprises of 500+ employees). Participation will definitely be a necessary component for conducting those evaluations and ensuring ethical and sustainable business practices within the EU.
And so much more!
We would like to thank People Powered, Shipyard Foundation, NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and NDI (National Democratic Institute) for creating this space for exchange, learning, and innovation. Special thanks to Pole Dialogu Foundation for showing us around Muranów neighbourhood, a hidden gem of Warsaw.
We are glad that we can be a part of this amazing community and move the world of participation forward together!