Effective information and communication processes are prerequisites for successful development. They help to consolidate citizen participation by creating agency through fostering the culture of citizen ownership over governance processes.Effective information and communication processes are an integral part of empowering and enabling a healthy, vibrant civil society; essential for the creation of efficient and effective economies; and a critical component of social adaptation and of societies dealing successfully with changing world.
Deliberate forums need to be created to provide a viable environment for citizens to voice out their ideas that can help shape the world they want to see. Neutral Forums need to be available to all social classes of people where they can take part in serious discussions and debates aimed at ensuring that good governance is upheld in a country they are living in.
However, this is not the case in Malawi, ordinary citizens are vulnerable due to poverty and other structural barriers and this prevents many from freely and easily take part in decision making in the development processes taking place in their own country.
We live in a democratic world and people have to be turned into more active participants by involving them in the decision-making process. Deliberate forums are needed where people's opinions, interests and expectations are expressed on an issue that concerns the whole or part of the society. It is through the active participation that forms powerful ground for an understanding of efficient citizenship and functioning and powerful democracy. Powerful debates, are good forums that can provide opportunity to all Malawians of all social classes to take part on issues that really matter to the development of Malawi.
Public Debate Forum (PDF) in Malawi is deliberately created by Innovations For Change www.innovations4change.blogspot.com to help empower citizens to buttress the excesses of the state against the people. It is a an innovative appproach that uses live debates, connecting people through the blog, facebook, and simple text messages using our Frontlinesms system which is capable of facilitating two way conversations with thousands of people.
When the World Bank asked 40,000 poor people in 1999 what they desired most, having ‘a voice’ was one of the most frequent replies, second only to improved income and basic necessities. Not being able to have a say in decisions that affected their lives was identified as a key element of poverty in itself.
