Name of the sub-grantee: “Public Awareness and Monitoring Center” NGO

Name of the sub-grant project: Control of Community Budget Through Dialogue

Brief Description: The project aims to makea analysis of 2017-18 municipal budgets of the Alaverdi, Akhtala and Spitak cities through participatory monitoring, paying attention to Environmental protection expenses and the effectiveness of the Environmental projects, as well as to promote good public engagement practices in the community budget process through electronic and participation tools, thereby help local self-governing bodies be more accountable and responsive to their communities, and can also improve the public’s perception of community performance.
The project will promote public awareness and public involvement in 2019 budget execution and supervision processes will be set up effective practices for the participatory budgeting for 2020.

It is expected that the members of the target communities (up to 20%) will be aware of the programs and spending in the community, of mechanisms to participate in budget management, and at the same time they will have an opportunity to shape the municipal budget through an electronic tool/ questionnaire is offered by the project.
Due to the introduction of public monitoring and control mechanisms, a dialogue platform can be established between the public, local self-government bodies and regional authorities to promote transparency and accountability of community budgeting.

Actions in Brief: 

• Study the performance of the 2017-18 municipal budgets of Alaverdi, Spitak and Akhtala communities, with an emphasis on the environmental protection activities,
• Implement awareness-raising activities in each target city on Community budgeting and current control,
• Organize awareness campaign by using at least 8 animated and informative infographics on key expenditures (including environmental expenses) in Alaverdi, Akhtala and Spitak communities via social media and other electronic platforms,
• Visualize the performance of the first quarter of the 2019 municipal budgets, make it more simple and understandable; to contribute to public participation in the community budget reporting,
• Promote participation of the CSOs and citizens in the sessions on the municipal budget’s implementation reporting for the first quarter 2019, as well as disseminate information about the sessions,
• Develop and apply interactive budget/online questionnaire for shaping target communities’ budget,
• Present and discuss both the results of the analysis and public’s recommendations about the municipal budget implementation and 2020-budget formulation to both local self-governing bodies and Lori Marz Administration.

Here is the video about the project.