Participation Center, short for Social Equity and Participation Center is a non-government, not-for-profit organization in China which aims to reduce social inequality with citizen engagement.
Mission and Purpose
The Social Equity and Participation Center works to counter social inequality with citizen engagement.
Origins and Development
Established in 2011, Participation Center is a local social organization based in Chengdu, with nearly 40 full-time staff members.
Organizational Structure, Membership, and Funding
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Specializations, Methods and Tools
The organization pays high attention to citizen participation and social accountability. To elaborate, they focus on methods and tools which boost citizen participation, participatory evaluation of public policies and services, participatory budgeting, community governance and development, and more.
For the past eight years, the Participation Center has devoted itself to several fields to achieve their vision, involving urban planning, a right to education, and tax inequality.
Urban planning
Some of the actions taken include:
- Implementing participatory planning projects in urban communities, thereby mobilizing citizens to express their voices on public affairs, especially in public services.
- Capacity building on community governance to help NGOs, community based organizations, and local governments learn how to mobilize local residents, map community resources and reallocate those to proper places.
Major Projects and Events
Right to education
Policy research and innovative education service models were piloted in Participation Center projects to alleviate the education gap between rural migrant and urban children, especially as it relates to compulsory education. Migrant children enrolled in urban migrant primary schools as well as kindergartens were provided with better educational resources.
For migrant children, the Participation Center worked with participatory approaches to hold the business and public sectors more accountable regarding rural migrant children's compulsory right to education. Further, they offered a series of courses on faculty training and management, making up its absence in the school curriculum.
For the migrant community care center, the Center's focus is early childhood education service provision models exploration, such as social franchise and impact bonds. They also provide faculty training and management, improving teaching qualities and exploring unified and standardized norms of school management for rural migrant children’s community care centers.
Tax and inequality
This area focus involves the conducting of research on tax-related issues, including the current situation of illicit financial flows in China, and tax avoidance of multinational corporations, among other issues.
Participation Center organizes workshops and visit activities concerning tax-related issues, presenting basic knowledge, hot topics, scholar’s ideas, international experience or views for domestic social organizations, media and academics.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
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Publications
Several publications are available at:
- http://www.participation.cn/a/English/Urban_planning/
- http://www.participation.cn/a/English/Right_to_education/
- http://www.participation.cn/a/English/Tax_and_inequality/
See Also
Large-Scale Participatory Budgeting in Chengdu (China)
References
External Links
Homepage: http://www.participation.cn/jiaruwomen/20558.html
Community research works: https://participedia.net/case/5969