Transparent Budget Is Not A Lux
The action: Transparent Budget is not a Lux aimed to engage the citizens of Nikopol (a city in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast of Ukraine) in monitoring the municipal budget and increase their participation on the local level. The action was implemented in three phases. First, Maria researched the municipal budget from the perspectives of education, healthcare, public expenditures and infrastructure (construction of roads and bridges). Following this, the project team organized awareness-raising campaigns and discussions; through the social media posts, publications and creative infographics, young people actively engaged in the discourse. At the last stage of the project, Maria organized awareness-raising training for the young leaders to advocate transparent budgeting tools and held a roundtable discussion engaging the project participants, local authorities, and representatives from the business & non-governmental sectors. The latter event served as a platform to collaborate with the decision-makers and share recommendations.
The project delivered the budget monitoring research document with a creative infographic on the municipal budget priorities of Nikopol City. Also, the action engaged 40 active young leaders and raised their awareness in participatory budgeting. As an outcome of the training, the participants developed 7 seed project initiatives on the topics of sports and rehabilitation centers, shelter for victims of domestic violence, workshops and education, etc. Also, through the visibility campaign, action reached nearly 161,452 people via social media channels; 60,000 local citizens via the outdoor advertisements, and 8,020 readers via the newspaper publications and informed them about the Nikopol budget expenditures. On top of that, the roundtable meeting facilitated dialogue among the stakeholders from the public, private and non-governmental sectors. All in all, the action contributed to increasing the transparency of the local government and the budget of Nikopol City due to the high public control.
Project leaflet:
Project infographics:
| Fellowship Programs | 2020 |
| Country | Ukraine |
| Areas of Interest | Community mobilisation Watchdog |
| Topics | Democratic participation Transparency & accountability |
| Project duration | May 2020 - November 2020 |