Background and Objectives:
The Bogotá capital district has a population of approximately 6,800,000 inhabitants. Successive municipal administrations over the last 10 years have promoted an incremental process of decentralization of the city administration. This policy has been essential in strengthening the capacity of the organized population to participate in public affairs decision making, to promote social cohesion, and assert their right to the city.

As part of this policy, participatory budgeting, whereby citizens participate in the decisions for the allocation of municipal investments, has been introduced in the city by the present administration. The municipality has embarked on a strategy to apply participatory budgeting processes in each of its municipal administrative localities.

The objectives are to develop tools and instruments for the design and implementation of participatory budgeting processes in four administrative localities of Bogotá DC. The lessons learned in the application of participatory budgeting processes in the four localities will assist in improving such instruments for their broad application in all localities of Bogotá.

Activities:
The main activities are:

• Assessing the processes of budgeting for fiscal year 2005/2006, and evaluating the present budgeting process in the municipality.
• Designing training methodologies for local stakeholders and training activities on participatory budgeting.
• Establishing a focal group to guide the strategy for the implementation of participatory budgeting, and providing technical and methodological support to the same.
• Implementing pilot processes of participatory budgeting in four selected localities of Bogotá.
• Monitoring and evaluation of the experience in the four localities, and formulating recommendations for improvements and application of the processes in other localities of Bogotá.

Results:

• A document with the diagnosis, criteria and evaluation produced for the selection of localities for the application of participatory budgeting.
• A manual with the applied methodology and instruments for participatory budgeting produced.
• 200 people trained on participatory budgeting, and an evaluation of the results obtained in the training.
• Pilot experiences of participatory budgeting implemented in four localities of Bogotá, with 8000 people involved in the pilot process.