Estrategia comunitaria para la apropiación de los mecanismos de participación ciudadana en el barrio San Agustín Pamplona (2024).

Abstract

Our initial visit to the neighborhood and the first contact with the president of the Junta de Acción Comunal, we had a pleasant chat where several difficulties of the community were raised. We proposed to work on citizen participation mechanisms, which are notably scarce in people's daily lives. One of the difficulties mentioned was waste collection. To address this problem, we put up banners indicating the days and times when waste should be taken out in Barrio San Agustín. However, we faced problems in bringing the community together on several occasions, due to the notable community disinterest. In spite of this, we insisted and managed to convene the community to carry out the activities proposed in our schedule. We worked with a semi-structured interview and found that the community had difficulties in understanding the mechanisms of citizen participation. We also observed a lack of cohesion on issues of general interest. We used brochures as a tool to explain how community empowerment is vital for the functioning of society. In one of our activities, we held a discussion with the community about the roles and functions of each member of the Junta de Acción Comunal (JAC). We noticed that the community was confused about the functions of the president, vice-president, secretaries, fiscals, treasurers and other members of the JAC. We delivered four booklets: three to the Junta de Acción Comunal of the neighborhood and one to the Mayor's Office of Pamplona. These booklets contain all the activities carried out, a conceptualization of the mechanisms of citizen participation, the objectives of the booklet and our expected achievements. We conclude by explaining our intention with the primer: we want our project to help the community to use the mechanisms of citizen participation in their daily lives.