In 'New in the Community' we introduce one of the members of our International Democracy Community in more detail. Today, meet Ollin, the Mexican NGO working to give citizens a say in their communities.
Ollin is a Mexican NGO working to promote the rule of law through civic participation. Founded in 2011, it is staffed by mostly young people who believe they can make a difference. For example, Patricia, our Citizen Innovation Director is investing her time working in Ollin because she wants to live in a country where citizens have enough power to change the things they don't like about their communities.
With respect to direct democracy, we have been working with the Participatory Budgeting (PB) mechanism in Mexico City since 2016. In particular, in 2019 Ollin played a leading role in having the Mexico City Congress enact a new Citizen Participation Law. We also worked with around 1,000 people (mostly children) in creating PB proposals for the 2020-2021 edition of the PB mechanism. In 2020, our focus is set on the implementation of the new law. We are compiling a series of recommendations to the Congress so that the new law is strengthened and enforcing it is not so hard. We are also working on a Model PB Law that we could later on "export" to other States in Mexico and the world.
Our wish for the International Democracy Community is: experience sharing, open databases and collaboration. What we offer to the community: we are building a comprehensive database on PB in Mexico City (since 2011), which will be open source. We also offer our lobbying know-how ;)
