IOPD award ceremony within the framework of the international conference

Within the conference’s framework, the award ceremony of the 12th IOPD distinction “Best Practice in Citizen Participation” will be celebrated on Tuesday 27th November at night. This prize is annually given by the IOPD to recognise innovative democratic practices which local and regional governments implement.

During the ceremony, the name of the winner and special mentions will be disclosed. In this edition, the jury has evaluated the 20 experiences which passed on to the second evaluation stage. The first stage was carried out by IOPD members through the PARTICIPATE OIDP platform. 

The jury members who have evaluated the 20 finalist projects are:  

• Amanda Flety: Coordinator of the Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights at UCLG
• Laia Forné: Adviser for the Participation and Territory Department on the Barcelona City Council
• Wagner Romao: Professor of Political Science in the Universidade de Campinas in Sao Paulo, Brasil 

Members of the jury who will participate as speakers at the conference:

• Yves Cabannes: Emeritus professor at the University College London 
• Katherine Knobloch: Assistant Professor at the Colorado State University, USA 
• Dominique Ollivier: President of the Public Consultation Office of Montreal, Canada 
• Paolo Spada: Researcher and developer of the Participedia project
• Yanina Welp: Main researcher of the Centre for Democracy Studies at the Universität Zürich

This award is celebrated since 2006. That first year, the participatory budgeting project of Cotacachi (Equador) won with the experience “Processes and inclusion mechanisms of indigenous woman at local management”. On the other hand, in the 2017 edition the winner was the city of La Paz (Bolivia) with “Neighborhoods program and true communities”. You can find more information about the prize at the awards page.