FLGR succeeded to involve as project partners municipalities of three formats – small, medium sized and big. This now gives us the opportunity to say that citizen monitoring can operate in any municipality.
Citizens of the three municipalities chose for monitoring services that we did not predict, and once again proved that each municipality has its own specifics and communities have their own rules and pace of development.
Instead of the planned 3 monitored were four services - Knezha community declared that the monitoring of 2 services is needed. It should be noted that all the services to be monitored had monopoly character: 1 - in the social sphere, 1 - in infrastructure, and 2 - in the utilities’ sphere.
Where it was possible and within the possibilities limits, local governments have made improvements to the services in the course of monitoring. Voice of the people was heard, the companies - service providers felt the focus of public attention and improved service within the possibilities.
In three municipalities partner was overcome:
- The distrust of citizens that their voice will be heard;
- The concern of local authorities, the results of the civic monitoring will be used in the political struggle for local elections 2011.
Through training, learning by doing and experience exchange the capacity of communities for citizen monitoring was developed.
Active citizens were motivated to express their views and defend them through trainings in citizen journalism.
All this resulted in a higher number of participants in the citizen monitoring than planned]
The two distance courses conducted were a possibility for raising the qualification of the municipal and the citizenship of active citizens of the municipalities. This ensures greater openness of the municipality in the future and will positively affect interaction citizens - community.
The Volunteer Day, carried out in the three pilot municipalities’ support ed the recommendations of the citizens expressed during the monitoring and enhanced the overall impact of the realized project.
The views of citizens and municipality in the problem areas were drawn together, making the work of the municipalities more efficient and citizens - more satisfied.
As most significant results in the project (beyond work on specific requests of citizens expressed during the citizen monitoring), we consider:
- The termination of one concession contract in the municipality of Gotse Delchev –( that on Separate waste collection) and the intention of the municipality to announce bidding procedure for a new service provider;
- Replication of the methodologies for citizen monitoring developed by FLGR and at regional level (Rousse Region);
- Dissemination of the lessons learned from the project among many NGOs and municipalities across the country, some of them expressed an interest to implement citizen monitoring in their communities.