Meetings

Final (hybrid) meeting, 14-15 September 2021

The last partner meeting of the project was organized as a hypbrid meeting. From 14-15 December 2021, partners got the possibility to meet face-to-face at ITMO University, St. Petersburg/Russia. On the first day of the meetin, all pilot municipalities presented their implementation of PB in their places. On the second day of the meeting, all work packages' results were presented. An overview of all project results can be either viewed with the results table or the online manual.

Status quo on  the completed PB pilots:

The partner meeting was followed by a steering commitee meeting.

Online meeting, 16 September 2021

Since the last partner meeting (8 June 2021), all pilot partners are running their final pilots. Four pilots are already done with the voting and are already in the implementation phase. Two of these even already pilots realized projects from the second pilot. The remaining pilot municipalities will complete the voting phase in a few weeks.

Status quo on preparing the second PB pilot

Status quo on project outputs

The document on “Usability Study of Existing Web Pages” is finished and published on the homepage. The PBbase network was launched and the next network meeting with a focus on citizen activation will take place on 30 September. Further events in the next month will be organized by different project partners to share different views and expertise on topics of PB. The next EmPaci meeting will be a hybrid meeting organized by the Russian partners in November.

Online meeting, 30 June 2020

After updates of the current reporting stage the partners talked about the potential meeting in Lithuania in October 2020. The format is still open, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic maybe a hybrid meeting can be perfomed, with one part of the partners online and a group of partner in person in Lithuania. After that, all partners reported their ongoing process their PBs. Most pilot municipalities already have approved statues and regulations. Some like Bielsko-Biala, Bützow and Lahti already collected proposals and are currently checking the feasibility of the ideas. Vidzeme Planning Region even already successfully completed their PB cycle consisting of three stages of citizen involvement. The Russian partners completed their citizen surveys in all 11 participating municipalities and are preparing their 3 pilots municipalities for further actions.

The following table shows the status quo:

Furthermore, many of the project outputs take shape. Progress was made on the feature matrix, the PB type groups and the status quo report. The collection of training materials is progressing well and will surely provide a resource for interested municipalities in the future.

The next meetings will hopefully take place face-to-face in October 2020 in Lithuania and the partner will report their experiences with the feasibility check and give some interesting updates on the first voting in their PBs.

The second online meeting in April was the first in 2020 and was originally planned as a meeting in Riga in March. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, it couldn’t take place as scheduled.

All partners reported their ongoing process with a special focus on the preparation for the start of their PB processes, the training programs and Covid-19 followings for information/education programs for citizens. Updates were given on the status quo report and the PB type groups output. Additionally, all citizen surveys are done for the analysis.

Some municipalities even started to collect proposals by citizens within their PB process. The Latvian partners Laila Gercāne & Lienite Priedāja-Klepere from Vidzeme planning region reported, that Gulbene, another municipality inside the Vidzeme planning region, starts its own PB process. So, the Empaci project is already acting as a distributor of participatory budgeting.

Partner meeting, 29-30 October 2019, in Krakow/Poland

The second partner meeting is to be held from 29-30 October 2019, in Krakow/Poland. 

The second meeting of the EmPaci project team was held from 29-30 October in Krakow/Poland organised by the Regional Development Agency in Bielsko-Biała. Each of the project partners was represented by at least one person to the meeting. During the meeting, each pilot municipality provided an update of the status quo of its PB development process.

The implementation of the citizen survey in each of the pilot municipalities was discussed and the delivery of the survey results was agreed upon. With respect to the IT implementation of the participatory budget, the IT partners at the University of Rostock presented a Citizen Experience Journey with the example of one citizen through the participatory budgeting process. The goals were to give an overview of a possible interactions of citizens and the PB process by showing potential online and offline touch points within the process. The Citizen Experience Journey was followed by a discussion among the participants. In addition, other project activities such as the PB type groups and the international network were discussed and further developed.

The meeting also served as an opportunity for the first gathering of the steering committee of the project.

Online meeting, 11 June 2019

The first online meeting of the project was held three months after the kick-off meeting. The aim was to clarify any questions that came up during the fulfilment of the first tasks. In particular, the status quo analysis of participatory budgeting in the different pilot municipalities was clarified. Also, the preparation of the citizen survey was in the focus of the discussions.

The project is also already preparing multiplier events. Therefore, for example Jaroslav Dvorak from Klaipeda University will represent the EmPaci project at the workshop: "The value of the citizens’ participation for cities governance" at the XV UBC General Conference in Kaunas together with other project partners.

Kick off meeting, 27-28 March 2019 in Rostock

The first meeting of the EmPaci project team was held from 27-28 March 2019 at the premises of University of Rostock/Germany, i.e. the lead partner. Each of the partners send at least one person as representative to the meeting. This means that 18 persons from the 14 partners from 5 countries attended the meeting. In addition, a representative of ITMO University, St Petersburg/Russia also took part in order to discuss the potential involvement of Russian partners to the project.

The project was very proud also to welcome Karin Wohlgemuth, a member of the Union of the Baltic Cities (UBC), which is an associated organisation of the project. Mrs. Wohlgemuth also held the talk thereby introducing UBC to the project partners. In addition, also a project officer at Interreg BSR Joint Secretariat attended the meeting and also gave valuable advice regarding project administration.

The kick-off meeting was used in order to introduce our partners, prepare the status quo analysis, and collect first ideas about the citizen survey and the international network. The meeting can be seen as a first success of the project.

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