Ramallah: The Water Authority organized today a specialized workshop on promoting the role of community participation in the water and sanitation sector in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to improve the participants' knowledge, skills, and applications in the field of community participation, examining and analyzing the existing practices and gaps in the community participation environment in the water sector, in addition to integrating practices and identifying training needs in the field of community participation.
The Water Authority is keen to focus on this aspect, considering that the water sector in Palestine is one of the most dynamic and influential sectors in various aspects of life, and one of the most important societal needs and priorities that occupy an important position, especially as it is one of the basic services in the Palestinian community. The organizers indicated that community participation enables the citizen and his institutions to participate in the planning, implementation, and evaluation processes and the optimal use of available resources and stimulates initiatives and contributions to serve the public good and the creation of sustainable development to enhance the principles of good governance.
Community participation is a two-way communication process between the institution and the local community that depends on the exchange of information between the two parties and the provision of citizen interventions on the issue prior to decision-making and policy development, as it is a process through which citizens, institutions, and relevant parties are integrated and involved and represented in planning and the fundamentals, and strengthening the mechanisms of accountability of the decision-maker, in a way that improves the management of public affairs, the quality of management and provision of services, and ensuring justice and equality.
The workshop also addressed the importance of community participation in managing public affairs by enhancing the openness of the institution to the local community, using various mechanisms and tools, to ensure that information and decisions reach the local community, as well as obtaining feedback from the local community about services, decisions, priorities, and their impact on improving planning processes, service quality, and responding to the necessary decisions.
As for the mechanism of community participation, the participants explained that it is based on the legal, legislative, and general policy environment that guarantees and supports the rights of citizenship in public participation, and provides a will and guidance for the leadership of the institution to involve the local community in its various activities, in addition to the institution’s adoption of effective mechanisms, means, and tools that facilitate the citizen’s participation in policies, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. In addition to the availability of a community culture that encourages participation and accountability, as stipulated by the law and drawn by public policies and directions, and the existence of civil society institutions that adopt public affairs issues and can represent and mobilize the voice of society.
It is worth mentioning that this workshop was organized in cooperation with the Global Communities Foundation and with the support of the World Bank, and targets employees of the Water Authority to introduce the basic principles of the mechanism and methods of integrating community participation in preparation for the program to raise the capabilities of employees in this field.
