The Hungarian Programme

This year’s programme followed two threads again: a nationwide random survey and local and national events were organised.

Events
Major events organised by those taking the initiative:

The organisers called upon Mr. László Sólyom László, President of the Republic of Hungary, to be the patron of the Citizen Participation Week.

In the framework of the Citizen Participation Week, the main organisers invited local community activists from the county workshops of the Vocational Network for Supporting Community Initiatives (activists from small villages, towns, cities, housing estates, etc.). The objective of the meeting was to have local activists present their work and meet each other at a nationwide event.

The conference has been held in Budapest between 1 pm, September 22, 2006 and 3 pm, September 23, 2006, parallel to the opening event of the Citizen Participation Week. Venue: Benczúr House (1068 Budapest, Benczúr u. 27.).

The opening event of the Citizen Participation Week has been held on Nyugati Square from 11 am, September 22, 2006. At this rather frequented location of the city we used banners and built a gate (symbolizing the opening of the Citizen Participation Week) and a crystal structure (representing the joining of forces and belonging together) out of plastic bottles in a collective way, involving volunteers, passers-by and other helpers.

Local events: this year we organised a total of 201 events and local surveys all around the country. Please visit www.arh.kozossegfejlesztes.hu to learn more about these programmes.

The Citizens Participation week became on of the greatest Hungarian civil initiation, involving more than a hundred NGOs from all over Hungary. During that week, there were hundreds of places in the country where different kind of discussions started in the framework of participative democracy:
Dozens of schools organised lectures around democratic issues; media actions took place in different cities (civil fires on every hilltops in the Mecsek mountains; schoolboys were sending messages for future politicians, by sending balloons to the sky in the city of Győr; a public mock-up was set up in Újpalota/Budapest, to let the locals to show their expectations and ideas in forming the local main square; dozens of community and civil meetings were organised, involving politicians and actors of the for-profit sector; conferences, workshops, seminars, forums, exhibitions, press conferences took place around different social, environmental and civic issues;

The HACD collected more than 7000 questioners from all around Hungary.

The echo of the media was not as strong as the previous year, as an unexpected political situation came into the focus. In spite of that 30-40 different media actors published the CPW in Hungary (articles, TV programmes, Radio interviews, on-line magazines).