Participatory Budgeting in the world will have an Atlas
The latest edition of Hope for Democracy, in 2018, has made evident the growth momentum of Participatory Budgeting processes in the World in recent years. The rapid transformation of these experiences and their widespread dissemination gave rise to the idea of creating a Participatory Budgeting Worldwide Atlas, in order to facilitate access to all stakeholders.
The Atlas will be an annual publication, consisting of (i) a set of maps with the territorial distribution of these processes; (ii) a separator with the individual records of each country; (iii) a block of texts, produced by experts, analyzing the main trends in the world.
The identification of Participatory Budgeting in the World is a task of enormous difficulty, so it is assumed, with all the realism, that the result of a work like this will always be an approximation to reality, being impossible to determine with accuracy all the existing cases. Yet, in the words of Nelson Dias, coordinator of the Atlas, "this effort is justified, since it is important for all stakeholders to have a sense of the scale of this phenomenon in the world."
Taking into account the existing restrictions, the elaboration of the Atlas will be carried out in the framework of international experts’ cooperation, academics, other movements and social groups involved in the topic of Participatory Budgeting in different continents.
The Atlas will be presented publicly during this year's edition of the Smart Citizenship Academy, which will take place in Cascais, Portugal, between October 15 and 18.
Those interested in collaborating can contact the coordination of the project by sending an email to atlas@oficina.org.pt. More information, in Portuguese, Spanish and English, can be found at https://www.oficina.org.pt/atlas.html
The coordination of the Atlas is being carried out by the partnership made up of Epopeia and Oficina with the support of Cascais Municipality.