Our project addressed the problem of insufficient knowledge on civic participation among the community of Święcica’s Primary School (Chełmski District, Lubelskie Voivodeship). The school is an important space for Wierzbica Municipality – it often organizes local events and engages the entire community. However, our observations suggested that the citizens would like to know more about their civic rights and duties and opportunities to engage in civic initiatives. Individuals living within the municipality told us that the available textbooks and pamphlets on civic participation and engagement are often complicated and hard to understand, which is a problem because they do find the subject interesting and important.

We answered that call, together with the community by implementing and testing a school participatory budget for the Primary School in Święcica. We have organized workshops on different kinds and techniques of participation for selected students, their parents, and other interested members of the community. We ran a training session on methods for public consultations and rules for the participatory budget. Together, we designed methods for voting and consulting that meet the needs of the children, the youth and the adults. We have put together a work team and decided on the project coordinators and ran the participatory budget for two years in a row. The first year brought seven initiatives, and we had nice in the next. Among them we had “Athlethic, healthy, and safe” initiative, which funded equipment for the field and track team, “Plants in a jar,” and “Fun English – Learning through play” – which funded purchase of educational games that support learning English. We have engaged members of the municipality in gathering and developing ideas, creating projects, and implementing and evaluation of selected initiatives.
Our surveys indicate that thanks to the project the citizens of Wierzbica Municipality developed their knowledge of civic participation methods and, on the basis of the school participatory budget, learned how to employ these techniques in their community. The surveys also indicate the participants are willing to continue implementing school participatory budgets in the following years.