Working with local governments in order to improve the quality of governance and for gender sensitive budgeting

This working direction is starting and preparing in the process of community mobilization as one of the activities, which aims to benefit the community of the self-help group. It is developing step by step according to the impact of the work of social mobilization leaders in the community.

With the gained knowledge and experience and with trust of the community, the leaders more effectively are starting the dialogue with the local governments and they position as community representatives.

This is how the local governance is implemented and improved, as well as the national legislation about local governments.

This working direction also includes:

• Trainings, informational and consulting meetings for self-help groups, interested members of the community and for local government representatives. The topics are following: national legislation about local governments; procedures of participation and citizen’s involvement in the process of governance;
• Self-help groups are charring out the research according to special questionnaire: the community profile;
• Self-help groups are conducting the research about the community needs and problems; they open the dialogue with local government representatives and together they are making the list of urgent needs of the community; they are learning more about listed issues and are preparing for presenting the most important issues to the municipal and executive departments of the local governments;
• Municipal governments host the round table meetings where community representatives are presenting the prepared list of community needs, government representatives are responding and assume to take them into the consideration while planning the budget of local government; the round table meeting is written into minutes and is reported. The report is delivered to responsible bodies of local government.
• Self-help groups are monitoring the implementation of given promises of local government representatives.
• The topics researched by self-help groups is also taken into the consideration for grant making of Taso Foundation