Dear PD Forum Network members,

The July issue of Dialogue on Participation, a newsletter on participatory
discourses is uploaded on PD Forum website.

Dialogue on Participation, Issue 4, July 2006

Features

South Africa: public participation in policymaking—a practical examination
Janine Hicks and Imraan Buccus

Public participation has indeed been a foreign concept in apartheid South Africa, where public participation was not provided for and people simply had to abide by the brutality of apartheid’s laws. Viewed in this context, South Africa has made enormous strides towards effective public participation.

However, there are some significant challenges for participation in policy
processes.  These include design, capacity and resource gaps impacting on the effectiveness of measures put in place.


Public Achievement: A Framework for Engaging Young People in Grassroots Civic Action - Serdar M. Degirmencioglu

Dominant social policies give young people a single role: Being a student. Young people are expected to go to school and are actively discouraged from participation in public life. This, in fact, is a violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, which requires that children (i.e., young people under 18) be consulted on all matters concerning them. There is a clear need for models that can facilitate young citizens’ participation and help their participation become an integral political strategy for promoting economic and social justice.

Editorial: PD Forum–The Resurgence
PD Forum is going through a transitional phase resulting from several
years of critical reflection on its social and historic purpose, its
mission and objectives. PD Forum has observed a shift over the years from participation conceived as the central means of driving social justice agendas to “participation” being deployed as a simplistic tool for
implementing development projects in pursuit of achieving short term
expectations with very little consideration of people’s lived experience
on the ground. Themes raised at the three international conferences (1999, 2002 and 2005) that PD Forum has hosted in Canada have inspired this period of reflection and the adoption of a more overtly critical stance towards participatory development.


PD Forum Activities
Summary of Milestones: Jan 2005–July 2006
Annual General Meeting (June 2006)
Fundraising Event


Lui
Program Manager

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The fourth issue of PD Forum quarterly e-newsletter "Dialogue on
Participation" is now available on our website

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