The Centre for Participatory Democracy

Background

People's freedom of choice is highly restricted nowadays. In every life framework (work, studies etc.) matters are conducted by a handful of people who decide for everyone else in that framework. At school, the head teacher decides, in a factory - the management, and in the town and country where we live - elected officials do so. The general public has no such framework.

As a result, people who cannot make an impact and are not involved become passive and ultimately indifferent towards their surroundings. They do not take responsibility for events around them, and never have to think about basic assumptions or crystallise their own set of values. Instead, they leave the thinking and responsibility to those decision-makers.

We can agree with those managers, complain about them, or just ignore them and their decisions. At each point in life, people are (ostensibly) educated towards democratic values, but in fact they are not free to join in the discourse. They are distanced from decision-makers and those who design the frameworks where they live, work and study. That gap between educational statements and practice, is frustrating. It encourages lack of interest, and lack of desire for getting involved. People grow up without debating skills, unable to manage discussions - and if they do try to, it tends to be rather unsophisticated. They have difficulty in expressing their opinions, and sometimes believe their opinions are unimportant because no one shows any interest in them. Attempts to solve the problem through the existing discourse are few and superficial, and this creates a more violent, less tolerant society, where public debate is shallow, vulgar, simplistic, and uninspired.

THE VISION

We aspire to design a community-based society where everyone can have an impact on the decision-making process and equal rights to decide...a community where people are in a constant discourse and dialogue over how to manage public affairs. A community that conducts itself by democratic principles and encourages all its members to express themselves and their uniqueness as individuals.

A democratic society can be built on a culture of participation and dialogue that continues throughout life - creating a democratic discourse, and a rich community life where members take responsibility for their lives, and a culture of non-violence takes shape. It empowers every individual within it. In that society, people get involved to achieve a better society and develop critical-independent thinking.

The Centre for Participatory Democracy presents alternative methods to various entities in society, and helps them conducts internal democratisation processes. The centre provides models for involvement and advocacy, and creates a participatory culture between bodies and groups. The centre adapts itself to the distinctive needs of each entity, to encourage them to fulfil the inherent potential of its members, and help them become a community that functions though the participation of all its members, and to their satisfaction.

RUNNING PROGRAMS

The Kibbutz Education College - Students Association

After several years without a students association at the Kibbutz Education College, as students at the college we led a process of founding up a new association and designing it a democratic - participatory body. From the outset, the process was performed in full transparency, and we encouraged as many students as possible to take part.

Using participatory tools, the association was structured to encourage student involvement in its ongoing management. These are the chief methods used:

• The association regularly publishes all its decisions and the Minutes of its meetings.
  
• Students' ideas are promoted together with those who proposed them.
  
• A Students Initiatives Committee was set up. It is aimed at encouraging, financing, and advancing students' initiatives on and outside the campus: social involvement initiatives are preferred.
  
• An internet site was designed and created. Open discussions by the student community are held there, and decisions made on the basis of online surveys.
  
• The association holds student meetings to discuss and decide on material issues. In the summer vacation, when substantive issues accumulate, it holds a weekend-long seminar where a discussion & decision marathon takes place: the seminar is open to the whole student-body.
  
• The association's chairperson is not entitled to vote - as the students' representative - at any external student association, on any decision, unless s/he has received prior approval to do so.
  

Involvement Project - Rishonim High-School

The Social Involvement Incubator program was run at the Rishonim high-school as part of the enrichment program for tenth to twelfth grades. It takes the students through a three-stage project that creates interest and motivation to generate change in a selected area: in-depth learning about that area; and the acquisition of tools and knowledge to create change - ultimately generating a sense of efficacy by producing projects on a local scale. The program's coaches are experts in content and process, and all have professional extensive know-how in the chosen areas, plus a background of generating change (activism). As the program progresses, the coaches become less and less dominant, and make room for the growing sense of responsibility within the group; they encourage students to become ever more involved in leading, learning, and doing - as a group.

The process begins by choosing an area out of several (ecology, body image, education, consumer culture, etc.). In the first part of the course, the group sustains a "shock" to its accepted worldview about the area, and is shown - in a managed way - problems and risks connected to it. At this stage, initial motivation is created to learn more about the area, and think about possible ways for coping with the problems and risks they have seen.

Later, in-depth learning is generated - stemming from taking personal and group responsibility for the area studied. In the process, we use different methods such as experiential learning and peer learning. Towards the end of this stage, students are able to start thinking about producing a project, and different ways of producing it.

In the process's final stage, the group is ready to launch a local project (in the classroom, school, or neighbourhood) - in terms of the know-how they have acquired and the level of responsibility they take on. The project that the group chooses is independently planned and implemented: at this stage, the role of the coach is to support, mentor, provide guidance and advice, and most particularly to enjoy the creative spirit that the group displays.

High-school students from Herzliya visited disadvantaged areas of South Tel-Aviv where they learnt about prostitution, migrant workers, the expulsion of Palestinian workers, and the lives of all these groups. Now they must think what they can do about it...Read - Yaron Schwartz's article, on the Walla website.

Social enrichment program - the Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Scouts

This year we ran a social - political enrichment program for leaders of the Tel Aviv - Jaffa Scout troop. The group took part in a series of meetings that brings them together with ourselves and our society, examines surrounding political issues, and shows them sites for generating change - inward changes, and in wider society.

The goal is to accompany the work of young people doing community service, in neighbourhoods and Scout troops and to empower activity with the insights of social change, participatory democracy, and our place in these processes. The program includes field-trips to South Tel Aviv and Givat Olga, to confront less pleasant circumstances that are usually swept out of sight - and also places where simple local endeavours have created major change.

The centre offers several participatory work-programs for participatory work with education facilities

Supporting democratisation processes in organisations/ communities

The program consists of a process in which we track an organisation or group with ultimate aim of creating participatory group mechanisms, procedures, and culture that grants each individuals as much attention as possible, and merges everyone into an involved, active community that impacts on the inner and outer ways in which it conducts itself. The program includes work with leading teams of the organisation/community, enrichment and training for position-holders, and creating change in structure, atmosphere, and feelings within the organisation / community - from "the bottom-up".

Encouraging social involvement

These are programs on different scales, all aimed at encouraging a group to seek out and get involved in social activity in a chosen area, and social endeavours that link up to each learner's areas of personal interest. They provide an unmediated encounter with social issues, and experiential deepening and activity in a specific field of knowledge. All programs combine know-how, experiential learning, a critical perspective, and tools for social change that transform passive learners into involved and proactive ones.

One-off workshops and field-trips

Tel-Aviv Unplugged - field-trips to the reality below the surface, to events usually far from the spotlight, and the reasons why they happen. In search of two worlds - a field trip in the footsteps of "common or garden" people who rose up, took responsibility, and created a different reality. You don't have to be a mayor to create a major community change - you can start from where you live and create change that empowers you with tools for broader social change. This is a series of workshops and meetings structured to match the target population, providing tools and ideas to lever social efforts that impact on the community - making it involved, participatory, and proactive.