ASK THE LOCALS!

Start Date: 01/08/2015

End Date: 31/01/2017

Ask the Locals! is a civic project aiming at utilizing small community structure and dynamics for enhancing accessibility and effectiveness of allocation of EU resources. It will be conducted by 6 civil society organizations, involving 600 participants and volunteers from 4 EU member states & 2 EU candidate states with severe problems with corruption and equal transparency scores: Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, F.Y.Ro.Macedonia (Transparency International, 2014).

ALO! maintains that promoting civic engagement and empowerment locally has important conceptual and methodological advantages in the process of EU integration as it fosters immediateness and easier mobilization and contributes to building a culture of participation at other levels. At the same time, it involves citizens and stakeholders who rarely have a chance to contribute in the process of building a European narrative. The main projest activites are:

– Capacity Building Activity (CBA).

Participants in the CBA will familiarize with the: Existing discourse & EU policies against fund abuse, state of affairs in partner countries as regards corruption, ways to promote fair access to resources through collective action.

– Field research in selected small communities and record locals’ stories and experiences with mismanagement of EU funds. The research is conducted face to face using mixed methodology applied through semi-structured interviews.

– Awareness campaign.

– Final event.

Specific objectives:

– To engage and empower the losing side of corruption.

– To Inform about & actively promote fair access to resources as a way out of crisis.

– To promote social participation & initiative as an antidote to corruption.

– To correct misperceptions about peoples and their involvement in corrupt practices.

Outputs:

– Case-study collection.

– Documentary with locals’ stories of corruption.

– Awareness campaign.

– Final event.

Target groups:

Citizens and members from civil society organisations, local authorities, educational, cultural or research institutions, town-twinning committees and networks that are active in active citizenship and community development.

The Partnership:

– Inter Alia, Greece

– Center for the Study of Democracy, Bulgaria 

– Youth Alliance Krusevo, FYROM 

– PRISM – Promozione Internazionale Sicilia-Mondo, Italy

– Romanian Youth Movement for Democracy, Romania 

– Civic Initiatives, Serbia

Link the project website:http://askthelocals.eu/