Participatory democracy project proposed during Futurespotters
Hi all,
I really enjoyed the event last Thursday, and regret that I did not manage to join the second day.
For documentation purposes, I wanted to describe a little bit more in detail the idea that I had concerning the participatory democracy project.
The idea was to create a space where citizens could discuss the problems they have in their local community and collaboratively create projects to implement solutions to these problems.
Citizens would be able to browse through these projects and then choose which ones they want to finance with their 2%.
Here are the main differences with what already exists:
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this is not just a crowdfunding platform, it’s a place where citizens discuss and get involved in the implementation as well. cf. to @anon remark regarding Goteo - actually Goteo could be a great international partner for the implementation of the project. But the platform would be more like Babele + Goteo (Babele for the collaboration on projects strategy and implementation and Goteo on the crowdfunding).
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this is not just a platform where you see current NGO’s and citizens see to which NGO they want to give their 2%. This could be cool, but it is not a revolutionary value added platform, existing NGO’s are already collecting 2% from citizens, they do not necessary need a platform for that. Such a platform could be implemented without the municipality, and just by contacting NGO’s like Alex Stef suggested…
Actually when I thought this project, it was more for new ideas, grassroots initiatives, that maybe did not have yet a legal entity and that could get the money from the citizens the 2% that are already taxed in order to come to life - and solve the problem of no finance. This is why actually I was suggesting that it needed to be made by the local municipality or institution: the local municipality would get the 2% (I have to check if in Romania, as in Italy, the municipality can get money as well), and then they would allocate the money to the projects based on the votes of the citizens. This is where it gets really interesting: you allow to people to really choose local projects to solve local problems that they want to see alive, and you have local social innovators that maybe do not have a legal entity, maybe yes, to implement them. This is where you are getting smart, in collaborating with institutions, rather than avoiding them.
In this platform thus: grassroots initiatives that do not have a legal entity could get financed through the 2% that is already taxed by the government to solve local problems.
If you find it interesting, come to discuss it through this Thursday at the collaborative pizza event at Nod Makerspace… and bring your pizza ingredient with you 
Ruxandra
