Review
Let us remember that Mali’s Citizens’ Assembly is a process which aims at producing – from social groups and from various socio-professional and thematic sectors within all areas of the country and starting from the community - a shared vision on the crisis that is stopping our country’s evolution and its perspectives for solution. The process aims, then, at the construction of a collective vision through the expression of challenges, values, commitments and proposals.
The Djoliba Center and the Alliance to re-found the governance in Africa, supported by the FPH, become the organizational foundations of the initiative. In order for this happen, numerous local partners and contacts are mobilized all around the country.
The evaluation of the instruments during the first stage of the process of Mali´s Citizens’ Assembly took place in the Sikasso and Ségou regions. This exercise began simultaneously in both regions on September 2, ended on September 17, 2009 and encompassed twelve communities and six circles.
Development of the first stage instrument evaluation
The community and circle meetings of the Mali’s Citizens’ Assembly took place in twelve communities spread around six circles.
The field activities were performed by two field teams made up in the following way: one supervisor, one team leader and two facilitators. The team members were trained on the use of Desmodo software.
Those meetings brought up the community’s passion, enthusiasm and commitment to take part in this process, which contributed with a great demonstration related to the initiative. Around four hundred delegates took part in the communal and circle assemblies, who represented consuetudinary and religious authorities, administrative authorities, socio-professional associations and organizations which respond to the administrative organization, and geo-cultural logics of the communities and circles.
The local Sikasso and Ségou assemblies were the places chosen by the peoples to express the challenges to be faced, as well as the perspectives, their commitment and the values that give them their foundation.
The information collected allowed for the elaboration of the communal and circle perspectives. In this way, The delegates drafted twelve (12) documents which include the communal words and six (06) circle proposal logs (CPL). The use of conceptual cartography (Desmodo) permitted the analysis and visualization of the results.
Planning for the next stages in the process
The technical team, after a feedback session of the results from both evaluation teams, surveyed the practical difficulties connected with the use of the concepts in local languages and the pre-defined methodology, and it also learned some lessons in order to improve the next stages. Such stages are :
- The official launching of the initiative which will group political and state authorities, technical and financial partners, civil society organizations, etc.
- The planning and carrying-out of the communal and circle stages in the other six regions of Mali.
the Citizens' Assembly in Mali
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