The website outlines the work of the Commonwealth Foundation’s citizens and governance programme, which was launched in response to the 1997-1999 civil society in the new millenium project.
The prgramme aims to answer the questions:
- What does ‘governance’ mean and what should it look like in practice?
- What skills, knowledge, policies, practices and structures will ‘good governance’ require?
- How does citizen and civil society participation in governance impact upon the meeting of people’s basic needs and the legitimacy of democratic institutions?
The programme will document, assist and analyse a variety of projects being carried out around the world by project partners. Between July 2001 and July 2003, a Programme Team of professionals from different regions of the Commonwealth will seek out, or respond to, organisations involved in projects, both new and existing, that address these key questions. The programme will aim to learn from projects, where they are already running, or learn with them, where they are about to begin.
The programme offers support, ranging from financial to technical, as appropriate, to project partners, and will ensure that what is learned from each project is documented, analysed and synthesised. The programme will also ensure that these lessons are disseminated as widely as possible among practitioners, politicians and researchers alike and will produce a range of outputs including a toolkit, guidelines for citizen and civil society participation in governance and an accompanying series of Occasional Papers. [author]
The site includes links to papers and organisations and individual country reports.