Improving Citizen Participation and Feedback in Your Bagh: AManual on Town Halls
28
tion plan. Some possible ideas are policy recommendations,
an advocacy campaign, information dissemination, or media
outreach. It is not important to implement many activities at
once but to prioritize the activities planned in a well-man-
nered timeframe.
Monitoring of action plans is crucial. A working group
consisting of members of the legislature, constituents and
relevant government or professionals can be appointed. In-
cluding constituents in monitoring activities is most effec-
tive as they can report the implementation in the next town
hall meetings. Constituents trust constituents more than
elected speakers and officials.
Implement capacity building programs
If customer service or service delivery issues arose dur-
ing the meeting, consider developing an internal capacity
building program. These capacity building programs can
be discussed with the President’s Citizen Hall authorities as
they have all the relevant information on programs and pro-
jects working in the field where the local officials can have
access to capacity building trainings and technical assis-
tance. Also, experience sharing with other Citizen Halls is a
good idea.
Communicating action
Devise communication strategy to publicize government
accomplishments, inform citizens that commitments were
kept, and/or continue messaging on key themes highlight-
ed during the town hall meeting. These can be announced
publically through reports of the town hall meetings. The
reports and information can be posted on local government
websites and information boards.
The recommendations disseminated to the government
can be announced publically through the above mentioned
