Testimony on the preceding pilot session

“From a personal and professional angle, this training was of significant importance since it

provided an opportunity to gain knowledge and meet professionals from other countries

whose ideas and knowledge were complementary to our own. Participating in the forums

facilitated these contacts. To further participatory democracy, networking is vital”.

José Perez – Malaga, Spain

“I think that courses of this kind contribute to sensitising technical teams in charge of public

policy coordination by making them aware of the need to include various social actors in

discussing and defining public policies so that our work can really contribute to reducing

social inequality and to improving the interaction between the citizens and the government”.
Andréa Lage, Secretary of Planning – Ipatinga, Brazil

“On the whole, we think that the trial run of this training pole, e-Agora, was extraordinary. This was a productive experience because, despite it all, daily obligations and routine were reconciled with intellectual challenge, and there were illustrations of discussions on public policy which do not exist in Portuguese and which, in a very objective and rigorous manner, bring people and political thought together beyond the traditional liberal and neoliberal thought that is 'sold' in Portugal and the rest of Europe".
Jorge Neves, Mayor – Castelo Branco, Portugal

“I think that this was a rich learning experience: lots of experiments, divergent opinions, and various contributions during the discussions and forums among colleagues and representatives of various cities from around the world.
This was an important activity because we who come from a computerised city such as Parthenay were able to start considering the question of models that will be dominating forms of participation and local government, especially the massification of e-democracy. This will certainly be the second challenge, following the first which we only started working on in the early 1990s, i.e. the social outreach of the Internet, with the inclusion of all the citizens, actually adapted to local issues”.
Pierre Dessons, Director, Economy Pole- Parthenay, France

“This is an opportunity that greatly stimulates our practices in public services. Listening to our colleagues allowed me to see other situations and contexts, different from our own. The format, unlike what was expected, did not stymie relations between the teachers and the students. On the contrary, we saw a great diversity in styles. That gave us many possibilities. This course allowed me to overcome my resistance to distance learning”.
Gisele Machado – Juiz de Fora, Brazil

“Actually what was really interesting was the opportunity to think about possibilities for using new technologies in local participatory democracy. On our side, we were also able to evaluate how far we needed to go to reach this point, especially with regard to training. Training, of course, for the mayors and the politicians but also for community officers and citizens so that they can take over areas of thought and cooperation and can assess their power as citizens and think about the policies that will be applied in their cities”.
Philippe Montaigne – Parthenay, France