Project Summary

Communities Driving Change is a project focused on empowering the common citizen, providing digital tools to allow the expression of needs and opinions, reinforce their civic role and participation with solutions in an info-inclusive way in local communities using several field activities that will gradually raise the voice of local citizens to its public institutions, improve the quality of information that reaches out political decision-makers through the support of IT knowledge-based platforms or tools.

The concept of Communities Driving Change derives from the Speakers’ Corner concept where anyone and everyone can express their opinions and debate with others their positions on government, religion, traditions, culture, or any other subject of vital interest to their purpose in life since 1885 in England.

This will be started with democracy labs than to more generic public consultations and forums that will define a set of public causes, where themes and needs assessment priorities are polled democratically and will lead to information sessions and events to local populations of 4 different countries to exchange outlooks and share a sense of European democracy and future civic participation, with analysis, public discussions and local engagement about the EU role, involvement, and achievements in their daily life.

We will apply several methodologies, tools, and techniques to facilitate the comprehension of the citizen’s role in local communities and how they can participate in a legitimate way, remembering also their local history and their sense of European belonging and the impact of local, national and European policies.

• Improving active participation;
• Discovering the needs, opinions, and interests of the community;
• To create greater inclusion with respect to social and cultural values;
• To implement better policies and actions for the living conditions of the populations;
• To provide practical information on mechanisms for citizen participation;
• To develop new methodologies and approaches for local decision-making.