Second objective

The municipalities are working in a changing environment of a civil society which is demanding a higher quality of everday life in the local neighbourhoods for which the muncipality is responsible. An active civil society is increasingly claiming citizens' rights for participation at local affairs. Therefore MDP is supporting the civil society's capacities and possibilities to take over more and more a responsible partnership role with regard to the tasks and performances of the muncipalities.

One of the basic objectives of MDP therefore consists in the strengthening of civil society capacities either with regard to individual skills and knowledge (e.g. in proposal writing, participatory problem analysis, communitiy action planning) or with regard to organisational capacities of NGOs. The concept of the introduction of civic leaders (by the training of trainers) is going to be implemented with the perspective to integrate the civic leaders in municipal Human Resource Mangement. At organisational level civil society networks and municipal multi-stakeholder partnerships are going to be developed and implemented by institutional innovations and concrete projects.

At the institutional level partnership between civil society and the municipalities implies transparency as a basic feature of good local governance. This refers to an open information and an improved communication practice at the side of the local governments and of the municipal assemblies / councils. At the side of local governments supports therefore the introduction and implementation of municipal Public Relation strategies which use a diversity of information and communiciation instruments (incl. the media). At the side of municipal assemblies / councils MDP facilitates the improvement or introduction of a series of instruments (e.g. bulletins, timely foregoing assembly’s/council’s agenda informations, citizens’ hours with councilors and others) in order to improve the information and communication between citizens and their local political representatives.

Another focus at the institutional level concerns the improvement of direct participatory instruments for citizens with regard to municipal decision making. A better direct participation can be supported by more transparent budgets (participatory budgeting), new rules of public debates (not ruled by the municipality but by the citizens), the systematic surveying of citizens' needs and problems and others.

To move these different activities closer to everyday issues of citizens and NGOs MDP supports a series of concrete projects which express basic needs and interests of citizens in the MZ and the NGOs. Based on project proposals MDP applies criteria for project support.