it won't be a losing bet
Civil society and the local councils will be administrated by the people
28/03/2009

The most effective means to achieve local development and improve the functioning of the People's Councils is to raise the capacity of the cadres of civil society organizations the local media to assess the work of local people's councils and monitoring the needs of citizens.

"Maat" held a training workshop on how to make a public opinion polls and the work of local people's councils from 25 to March 27, 2009 with the participation of a number of volunteers and workers in NGOs as well as a group of journalists and media professionals in four Egyptian provinces .

The training workshop came under the activities of citizen's voice project implemented by "Maat" in cooperation with the Foundation for the Future (FFF) it seeks to empower citizens to create opportunities of effective communication with their representatives in local councils and develop effective mechanisms to monitor the needs of citizens depending on the method to follow the views and conduct field studies , the project seeks to raise the awareness of citizens toward public services, participation in decision-making process and to improve the efficient, responsive, and effectiveness the members of local councils in the targeted areas .

The events of the training workshop have confirmed that it will be a success bet on civil society organizations at the local level and on the local media means with regard to the operationalization of the people's control of the performance of members of local councils also with regard to the identification of local needs and deliver the voice of citizens to the officials concerned to resolve their problems and improving their community participation and enable them to control their representatives in the People's Councils of various levels .

The activities of the workshop training revealed that it is necessary to continue to work with associations and institutions in different governorates in a networked form and to pay attention to raise the institutional capacity and human and material and technical for these organizations, such as making an active part in the development process .

Finally, the workshop revealed the extent of the importance of the human rights system in the development process and the use of human rights tools to achieve the objectives of development with the same mechanism that "Maat" follow in citizen's voice project , this raises the question of overlap strongly and complementarity between human rights and development .