Platoniq, with the support of the platform DECIDIM, will develop a co-creation process about energy supplies with the inhabitants of two neighborhoods in Girona, a town in the northeastern part of Catalonia. This area where local inhabitants do not usually participate in collective processes. A group of neighbors have created a complaint union due to power outage. However, due to the limited resources and the low experience in such a specific issue, this groups needs accompaniment and support.

Font de la Pólvora and Vila Roja are two neighborhoods located in the eastern district of Girona

The project addresses two main issues: access to basic supplies of electric energy and the promotion of citizen participation. During the last year, Font de la Pólvora has been affected by prolonged power outages (lasting 24 hours or more), leaving the neighborhood in an even more precarious situation. Meanwhile, oligopolistic energy companies and the City Council are failing to address the problem. For this reason, a group of 40 neighbors organised themself against the "indiscriminate" blackouts under a “Movement for Dignity” to fight against power outages and to guarantee their rights to access basic supplies. However, due to the limited resources and the low experience in such a specific issue, this groups needs accompaniment and support.

The two neighborhoods are characterized, especially Font de la Pólvora, by a high percentage of gypsy population and with a significant degree of social stigmatization. Also, concentrate the lowest level of income and the highest rates of school failure, unemployment and truancy in Girona. Platoniq’s safe(r) spaces framework enables us to create more accessible tools and participatory spaces in our work and organization. We strive to create the environment where t voices that have not been heard so far can express their opinions. Fundamental to ensuring democracy and equality of opportunity and reducing oppression is placing a stress on gendered dynamics and exclusions based on race.

The grant will allow us to offer the very first opportunity to the inhabitants of this region in order to get organised and lead on the betterment of their practical conditions. The first step will be exploring and co-creating a hybrid participation and communication methodology that can be used in a neighborhood which are not participating. This will allow more families (who currently do not trust collective participation processes) to join the collective data collection project. Secondly, we will facilitate and adapt the technology to the needs of the neighborhood. We will be working in a neighborhood where an important part of the population is illiterate. Thirdly, this empowerment exercise will make it possible to network with other groups that are working towards the same goal.

The result of the project will be a free-open participatory crowdsourcing platform driven by the neighborhood. This will allow administrators or participants to create community driven databases with rich metadata. Results will be available in a structured way for export and as a visualization when geolocation is provided. The expected overall impact of the project is a greater involvement of neighbours in their local community - including a larger number of young people involved - through the use of an innovative tool. This will contribute to a real empowerment of cit

A civic tech empowerment process that helps the neighborhood to gain control over their lives through raising awareness, taking action and working in order to exercise greater control. Our idea aims at promoting universal access to conditions and public-community management of basic services through digital social innovation. This involves empowering citizens through the right to information and digital participation, introducing new ways to democratize management, such as the development of open source and open data tools that promote the participation and contrast of the information collected in the field by the driving entities.

The grant will allow us to offer the very first opportunity to the inhabitants of this region in order to get organised and lead on the betterment of their practical conditions. Platoniq are involve in a multiple projects but most of them are in large cities as Barcelona or Madrid, but part of Platoniq's team is from Girona. Now, we are leading the technical support in civic tech and democratic methodology to the most powerful organizations working to guarantee and fight for the rights to basic supplies in Catalonia. Our main motivation for supporting this project is that we can act locally (in the town who lives part of platoniq's team) and at the same time think globally.

Project management and coordination: 2.930,00 €
Programming and documentation: 10.987,50 €
UX Design: 3.662,50 €
Case and organization interviews: 2.930,00 €
Legal advice, data protection: 2.197,50 €
Communication (strategy, dissemination, illustrations): 3.662,50 €
Platform community manager : 5.493,75 €
Report and evaluation of participatory processes: 2.197,50 €
Travel and events (workshop, training events): 3.000,00 €
Other indirect expenses (hosts, materials...): 5.559 €

We would like to know other experiences of participatory processes on issues relating to the basic supplies of energy, we would like to exchange good practices of crowdsourcing and build a network of interest about Design justice principles with organization working in Europe.