International experiences of PB

The city of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil is most commonly mentioned as the birth place of PB, and what happened there during the 1990’s inspired people across the world. Thousands of people living in Porto Alegre who had never previously got involved became active through the PB process. Millions of pounds was spent through their PB process. Public money directly ifnfluenced by local people, leading to a real improvements in their lives. Porto Alegre has won accolades for the way PB empowered its citizens and spawned new examples of PB across the world. 

Another Brazilian city that has used PB has been called ‘The city that ended hunger”. Belo Horizonte is Brazil’s 4th biggest city. It’s own PB process saw local people devise new ways to improve the supply of health food to the poor, such as farmers markets selling fresh healthy food, better school meals and more support for local producers. Before 1993 over 20% of children were malnourished. By following proposals emerging from local communities a new food distribution network was established, and the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables increased, against the trend in other comparable cities. Child mortality fell considerably and over 30,000 get involved in PB meetings every year.    

Internationally PB has been growing and growing and seems to span all political persuasions. In the last 10 years reports of PB have been emerging from China to the USA and from Sweden to Fiji. Many cities in Europe have been trying their own form of PB.   There are well over 1200 places world wide implementing PB.

Since 2004 Seville in Southern Spain has promoted direct citizen’s direct participation in the design of the city’s budget. Community organisers in each neighbourhood collect proposals from residents and community groups. People can also submit their proposals directly to their local town hall or civic centre. After the proposals are collated citizens are invited to take part in open public assemblies. The process involves a series of community meeting where the previous year's budget is discussed, information about the coming year provided and rules/criteria for the proces are agreed.  This is followed by voting on the proposals put forward and electing delegates to represent the community at borough wide discussions.  And the final meeting is to refine any projects to vote on all the proposals from across the borough. 

Each year the council decides the amount of public budget that's allocated by PB. Currently, the city council’s departments of public works, sport, youth, education, culture, environment, health and gender have opted to join. In 2006 over 9,000 citizens took part.

Seville is just one example from Europe, but shows some of the classic features of PB, such as a repeating annual process, rules set in communities about how the PB process will run, proposals coming directly out of local communities, and volunteer organisers that debate and improve on those proposals so local people can make an informed decision. 

Other European countries to implement PB include Germany, Portugal, Poland, and France.