CEE CN site

19-25 September 2011

At its Belgrade conference of May 2005, the CITIZENS NETWORK of Central-Eastern Europe passed a resolution to organize a series of events under the name Citizen Participation Week. These events are held annually in September and take place across Europe.

Citizen Participation Week accentuates the issues faced by people and their local communities. The project’s main aims are to inform the general public about the importance of civil participation and to create publicity for community issues on local, national, and international level.

Citizen Participation Week – simultaneous civil action across Europe!

The events held during Citizen Participation Week represent the joint aim of NGOs across Europe to bring attention to the need for participative democracy in the community and in the European media, politics, and civil society. The concrete activities of Citizen Participation Week are decided by the national organizing committees and local organizations participating in the campaign. The national committees submit a call in their own country throughout August in which they invite the citizens, organizations, and institutions to participate in the project. An action plan is then developed and introduced in September by the participants. The programme of Citizen Participation Week includes local, regional and nationwide activities, volunteer and civic meetings, media events, public gatherings, school actions and exhibitions.

Citizen Participation Week is about using creativity and cooperation to appraise in a demonstrative manner the importance of civil participation in the broader social environment. For the seventh time in a row, local and regional issues and resolutions will be put on the agenda; the notions of participative democracy and the opportunities for active citizenship and involvement in local action will be discussed, as always, with an emphasis on good practices.

Citizens Participation Week is significant in Europe due to the large multi-national participation. In previous years, over 200 civil organisations participated in CPW and successfully gained support for their causes from public figures and leading politicians while their events received high-profile coverage in the local and international media.

List of participating organizations is available here 

For further information, visit the following links:

CPW’s facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/CitizensParticipationWeek/107893082602567)

CPW 2011 (available in Hungarian only) http://reszvetelhete.net/