COUV ACTES - Psychologie communautaire

Community Psychology: Common Values, Diverse PracticesThe family debate: an engagement tool to promote children andfamilies’ participationby Moises Carmona 1 & Ruben-David Fernandez 2Introduction: Reflections on participation in CataloniaDuring the last 15 years, different experiences of citizen’s participation have been developed in the region ofCatalonia. They were promoted by local and regional governments and have tried, in different ways, to fostercitizens’ participation in public policies. We find different participative processes on urban design, health, youth,immigrants, etc. And we understand citizen participation as an evolution in the relationship between governmentand citizens, looking towards complementing representative democracy with participative democracy, toultimately build citizenship.In many of these experiences, the main criticism has been around the number and diversity of its participants.Some of the discourses that we usually find on arrival at a neighbourhood to start a participative process are, forexample: "We are always the same ...." or "People don't want to participate ... .." or "People aren't interested inpolicy ...", etc. In this situation we have two options: whether we go back home assuming that it’s impossible topromote the participation of more citizens, or we take this as the CHALLENGE, which is the goal of our work.If we choose the second option, we face the challenge of promoting citizen participation in order to achieve aplural and representative participation of our municipality, district, etc. To face this challenge it’s necessary toguarantee creativity in the design of tools that are appropriate to facilitate the participation of each group. If we dothe same as usual, we obtain the same result, in our case involving the "usual” participants. Well, this does notmean that it’s wrong or that their participation should not occur. What we mean is that if our challenge is toincorporate new participants, we also need to do different things. To overcome this challenge it must beguaranteed to be creative in the design of instruments that are appropriate to facilitate the participation of eachgroup. And be creative means to think and to experience, not just waiting for a great idea.To facilitate public participation it’s necessary to add allies and new actors. The school and the children are apotential amplifier of participation we should not miss. "2 + 2 = is 5". We don’t want to introduce mathematics topromote citizen participation. Whether we foster a participative process, as if we are promoters or just aparticipant, "we must realize that to facilitate public participation is necessary to gather allies and to promote theinvolvement of new actors. This is when the math is different, as each new participant who managed to "seduce"the participative process to become a potential dynamic communicator and of the process, exponentiallyincreasing the possibility of expanding the diversity of participation.1Social Psychology Department, Barcelona University (UB) & ETCS Cooperative (Barcelona, Spain). Contact: mcarmona@ub.edu orrubendavid@cooperativaetcs.org . more information at: www.cooperativaetcs.org2Social Psychology Department, Barcelona University (UB) & ETCS Cooperative (Barcelona, Spain).247