A PB pilot with farmers
A PB pilot with farmers in Elgeyo Marakwet County
DATE
24th/08/2020
Background
Participatory Budgeting (PB) is the most widespread global participatory model for inclusive governance used in over 7,000 cities. PB has been proven to makes governments more responsive, connect officials with the communities they serve and build pathways for lifelong civic participation. PB process accord citizens real power directly decide how to spend part of a public budget thus, systematically shift political decision-making, built and institutionalized greater political power for citizens. The experiment however, was designed to test its application to generate alternative budgetary proposals rather than spending funds that is already secured.
Summary
Through this experiment, we collaborated with the Marakwet Highland Farmers Association to train 20 budget facilitators drawn from five wards in the highland of Marakwet West and Marakwet East sub-counties i.e., Kapyego, Lelan, Sengwer and Charang’any/Chebororwa.
The association and its budget facilitators submitted a memorandum to the government during public participation and asked for an allocation of KES 10 million to address key challenges across the agricultural value chain.
The memorandum was designed through a participatory process. The budget facilitators convened 54 community meetings and collected ideas from 1,120 community members across four wards.
The discussions were designed to facilitate practicing farmers to reflect on the lived experience, identify challenges impeding agricultural productivity and collectively identify probable solutions. In each of the meetings, about 200 delegates were nominated to attend ward level meetings to deliberate and filter the ideas in efforts to develop proposals for the submission.
Resources and materials
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