European Week of Regions and Cities: citizens engagement and EU main challenges

Within the framework of the 19th European Week of Regions and Cities, on the 12th of October 2021, ALDA, together with the European Partnership for Democracy, organized the online workshop “Boosting territorial recovery through innovative citizens’ participation”.

The main theme of the workshop was citizens’ engagement, and how it can improve local governance and play a key role in addressing the main challenges the EU is facing right now related to the environment, digitalisation, social inclusion and economic recovery, along with the revitalization of European cities in the post-pandemic reality.

Within the framework of the 19th European Week of Regions and Cities,  ALDA  organized the online workshop “Boosting territorial recovery through innovative citizens’ participation”

The speakers, coming from all over the European Union, were:

• Gonçalo Lobo Xavier from the European Economic and Social Comittee, who presented the EESC work and recommendations to promote investments in education, infrastructure and industrial policies that can raise employment in EU’s Member States, 
• Gary Glaukka from Demo Finland, presenting Demo Finland’s approach to enhance democracy through collaborative projects between Finnish political parties and parties in new and developing democracies, 
• Krzysztof Izdebski from the Open Spending EU Coalition, who presented the Open Spending EU Coalition work to improve transparency, decision making and services in governments through collaboration with activists and citizens,
• Valentina Minazzi from Legambiente, with a presentation on the effect of citizens’ participation in raising awareness and promoting actions about climate change, and on how to further promote citizens participation for the future, and 
• Antonella Valmorbida – ALDA Secretary General, who presented ALDA’s work in supporting citizens and local authorities affected by the Covid-19 crisis. 

After an introduction by ALDA’s own Project Manager Nadia Di Iulio, the speakers shared their experiences and examples of participatory processes and bringing together different expertises. 

Between the speaker presentations, videos were shown introducing European projects currently facing these issues through citizen participation, such as SMART – Small Museums Alliance Representing Territories, Food Wave, P-CUBE and LIME – Labour Integration for Migrant Employment.

A final part of the workshop was dedicated to the participants’ questions for the speakers, discussing further some of the practices and ideas brought to this event.

ALDA is proud to have participated in the organization of this event, and will be thrilled to participate in the European Week of Regions in the future as well! 

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You can watch the projects videos here: (link to a youtube playlist – soon available)

Curious about the workshop? You can watch the recording online here