The election of the province of Santa Fe as one of the leaders of this international action is based on the recognition of the European Union towards the policies of citizen participation and strategic planning that the provincial government has been carrying out since 2008.
The Plades project is coordinated by the metropolitan city of Bari (Italy) and has as international partners the Eurosur Foundation, also Italian, and the Government of the province of Santa Fe, represented by the secretariat of International Relations and the Under-Secretariat for Strategic Development. In addition participate the Caaguazú and Misiones governments and eight municipalities of these departments, as local partners of the project.
STRATEGIC PLANNING, PARTICIPATION AND TRANSPARENCY
The project, which has been run in Paraguay since last February, aims to strengthen the institutional capacities of the local governments of the departments of Caaguazú and Misiones, through the improvement of strategic planning tools for the achievement of a sustainable local development, recognizing as fundamental pillars the inter-institutional cooperation between the different levels of government and the design and implementation of mechanisms and instruments of democratic citizen and social actors participation.
In this context, the province of Santa Fe was summoned to share and transfer the experiences and good practices of citizen participation and social dialogue. In this sense, provincial officials have taught awareness-raising seminars and training for different authorities.
These instances of exchange and collaboration seek to strengthen the capacities for the implementation, management and monitoring of sustainable development plans and territorial planning, providing tools to improve the quality of the processes of citizen participation for the design, execution and evaluation of strategic transparency plans for accountability.
As part of the agreement, the provincial director of Territorial Strategic Planning, José Citroni, together with Ileana Sanz, member of the Undersecretary of Strategic Development, offered in Paraguay two seminar-workshop on good practices of citizen participation in which the local and technical teams designed a Plan of Action for the implementation of local citizen participation laboratories, and a catalogue of participatory tools and institutional strengthening.
For 2018, the government of Santa Fe is expected to accompany the Paraguayan municipalities involved in the Plades Project, in the implementation of its citizen participation laboratories.
