Improving Citizen Participation and Feedback in Your Bagh: AManual on Town Halls
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choose, there are a few critical factors that need to be tak-
en care of to ensure a successful town hall meeting. These
points will all be covered in the next section, “Organizing
your town hall meeting.”
Open forum
A common format for town hall meetings consists of an
introduction by a moderator who serves as the “master of
ceremonies” (akin to ad hoc or informal chairperson), fol-
lowed by a short welcome by the ranking government of-
ficial and a period of open comment by constituents in at-
tendance. For open forums where no specific topic was
pre-identified in the advertisements or by the moderator,
having a range of department heads from the bagh will be
important as constituents may have questions or comments
about the full range of policies and services of the bagh.
Where possible, the department heads or the mayor should
answer direct questions but information given should be
kept short to allow many constituents to participate. At the
conclusion of the forum, the moderator should briefly review
Town Hall meeting in Umnugobi, September 2013
