Five young civic monitors are keeping track of public policies in Bucharest, focusing on green areas, waste management, and building and construction management
Between August and October 2023, a team of five motivated young people, aged 20 to 22 contributed to the civic monitoring and evaluation of local public policies in Bucharest, the capital and the largest city in Romania.
The youngsters took it upon themselves to monitor several key policy areas for the city: urban mobility, waste management, building zone codes, and green areas. They either focused on specific sectors of Bucharest (Sectors 2, and 3), which function relatively independently like smaller cities, or looked at city-wide policies and legislation, as was done in the case of building codes.
The young monitors took part in the civic monitoring activity after they participated in a training in July coordinated by the CRPE team on how to effectively monitor the implementation of public policies at the local level. They learned about the tools of civic participation and how they can contribute with actions to the local administrations’ policies.
After the training, our young monitors chose the topics that concerned them the most in their city for monitoring. What followed was that they monitored the chosen local policy in several stages. They started from the resources and data available online, and they continued by formulating a monitoring methodology to see the extent to which the local public authority is working on managing the local situation. For that, they carried out a series of data requests, conducted interviews, consulted local strategies, made field visits, etc. Finally, the civic monitors will develop recommendations for local authorities and outline specific steps for these recommendations to be fulfilled. Their input will be presented to the local public authorities in November, and the results will be included in a final civic monitoring report.
In Romania, we use civic tools minimally and have a limited understanding of local administration. We often lack motivation and interest in volunteering, civic groups, NGOs, and public elections. Through this project, we are trying to break down these barriers and find the leverage and resources to convince as many young people as possible to get involved.
“In July, I had the opportunity to participate in the training organized in Bucharest at the CRPE office. Throughout the two days, I discovered various things, from civic involvement through participatory budgeting policies to methods of monitoring local policies. In the end, each participant chose a topic and a sector/city where they could implement the methods of monitoring local policies they learned. Then, I found out even more relevant information about the chosen topics directly from the Mayor of Sector 6 during the visit to the City Hall. The training in Greece (…) gave us the opportunity to discuss our projects with them. Thus, we discovered the different levels and types of civic involvement in each country. It was a very interesting experience!” (Tania, 20 years old, one of the civic monitors)
In 2024, we will focus on dialogue with the youth, as well as debates between them and public authorities at the local and national levels.
This series of activities is part of the Erasmus+ project ”Civic EU – Young Civic Monitors for the Future”, implemented by CRPE in partnership with four other organizations from Italy, Greece, Latvia, and Slovenia. More information about the project can be found here.
The project is implemented with co-financing from the European Union. The content of the project activities is the responsibility of the Romanian Center for European Policies (CRPE) and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the European Union or the Education and Culture Executive Agency of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
